The New York Times’ Kevin Sack positively reviews changes in the federal government’s medicare pay system for hospitals. Medicare is no longer footing the bill for "reasonably preventable conditions" caused at hospitals. It’s part of the new "performance-pay" model at the Center for Medicare Services (part of the Dept. of Health and Human Services) designed to trim costs and make hospitals more accountable.

Hospital accountability has been a periodic hot topic in the health care debate, since a 1999 Institute of Medicine report found that almost 100,000 patients a year die from preventable hospital accidents. But despite the patient safety movement that study spawned, the figure (which includes all patients, not just the 12.5 million people on medicare) has stayed about the same. Check back in five years to see if the changes made now reduce that startling figure.-MB

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