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House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda
House of Representatives
Session of 2013 - 2014
Regular Session
MEMORANDUM
| Posted: | January 7, 2013 09:06 AM |
|---|---|
| From: | Representative Phyllis Mundy |
| To: | All House members |
| Subject: | Reintroduction of Legislation: Incentives for Health Care Providers to Implement Quality Management Systems (Formerly HB 228 of the 2011-2012 Legislative Session) |
| I will soon reintroduce legislation to provide incentives for health care providers to implement quality management systems (QMS). Preventable medical errors continue to plague our health care system. Millions of people experience medical errors and health care-associated infections each year, with approximately 200,000 Americans dying as a result from them. A study by the Society for Actuaries in 2010 estimated that medical errors cost the United States $19.5 billion in 2008 alone. My proposal seeks to protect patients from preventable medical errors and to lower health care costs by offering a write-down of Mcare assessments to health care providers who institute QMS approved by the Department of Health. QMS helps health care providers to reduce medical errors such as illegible prescriptions, wrong-site surgery, and health care-associated infections by allowing them to continually analyze, streamline, and improve how they operate. QMS, which has been successfully implemented for years in private industry, has already reduced medical errors in health care facilities throughout Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Implementation of QMS ensures quality, prevents costly mistakes, and eliminates waste and duplication of effort and resources. The legendary American industrialist Henry Ford realized this nearly a century ago when he introduced QMS systems into health care by implementing them at a hospital he established. Moreover, in the late 1990s, the Veterans Administration hospital system also adopted QMS to reduce medical errors. I strongly believe this legislation would help reduce not only human suffering but also the ever-rising financial costs to our health care system. PRIOR CO-SPONSORS: Pashinski, Cutler, DeLuca, Fabrizio, Freeman, Kortz, Murphy, Payton, Staback, Wagner, and Kavulich |
Introduced as HB563