On the recordJuly 15, 2010
today I am proud to introduce the Culture of Safety Hospital Accountability Act. This bill will test alternatives to the current, inflexible system to ensure that hospitals are meeting the highest health and safety standards for their patients. Under the current system, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, or CMS, requires hospitals participating in Medicare and Medicaid to comply with Conditions of Participation--health and safety standards established by CMS for the protection of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries. CMS contracts with State agencies to perform inspections of hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care facilities to ensure compliance. However, there are significant deficiencies in the current system. A major concern among hospitals is CMS' assignment of Immediate Jeopardy, which puts hospitals on a 23-day fast-track to losing their Medicare and Medicaid funding. Right now, the only remedy that CMS has when a hospital receives a citation is termination. There is no flexibility to consider the incident on a case-by-case basis--or even to consider whether the hospital self-reported and immediately corrected the incident. Moreover, current procedures fail to consider the substantial resources and efforts that hospitals are already investing in quality improvement and patient safety. Take, for example, a hospital in my State, which last year got a 23-day termination notice after they self-reported that one of their nurses had H1N1.
