Minneapolis-HMO’s policy not to cover errors may jeopardize reporting

HealthPartners’s recent announcement that it will become the first insurer in the nation not to reimburse for care that results medical errors has raised concerns that the policy could jeopardize providers’ reporting of mistakes under a first-of-its-kind state program designed to identify and eliminate the occurrence of 27 major medical errors, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. The state program, which was established in July 2003 and will be fully launched by the end of this year, aims to respond to medical errors “as system malfunctions to be tracked down and fixed”; all errors reported are made public, and findings are “shared with other…providers so their systems can be corrected as well.” Although the chief health officer and medical director of HealthParnters says the decision not to cover errors is not intended to be “punitive to hospitals” and was designed to further the state’s error-reporting effort, critics maintain that it “focus[es] on assigning blame” and that similar sanctions and penalties have not proven effective in the health care industry. The president of the Minnesota Medical Association says it has not taken a stance on the policy but notes that the state’s error-reporting system “was not implemented so that it then could be used as a punitive system.” A spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota notes that “if nothing else,” HealthPartners has furthered the discussion about how insurers’ coverage policies should help efforts to prevent errors (Majeski, 10/18).