Additional Information about HEAL

In August 2009, Governor Corzine signed the Hospital Errors Accountability Law (HEAL). After a two year campaign by consumer groups such as AARP, NJ Citizen Action and HPAE, working with Department of Health and Senior Services Commissioner Heather Howard, this health care quality bill became law.

The bill will improve patient safety in our hospitals by public reporting established patient safety indicators and by implementing payment policies that make patient safety a priority.

Annual hospital performance reports will now begin to list the frequency rates for certain preventable medical errors. Transparency in the number of errors that occur in each health care facility will inform the public and health policy makers. As any "report card" system works, public reporting of Patient Safety Indicators by health care facility will create a better incentive for hospital administrators to make error prevention a priority.

The bill also addresses a serious flaw in current hospital billing policies. Our current payment system inappropriately enriches hospitals and physicians that make errors. If a patient requires additional surgery, or needs to spend additional days in the hospital because of a preventable medical error, the hospitals and the doctors get reimbursed for that additional care.

This bill will follow the example established by Medicare for a short list of preventable medical errors such as wrong site surgery and foreign objects left in the patient after surgery. Additional payments for substandard care do not make sense. The Medicare program no longer pays for these types of errors; 14 other states have implemented similar policies.

The HEAL bill is an important victory for consumers in the state and will begin to provide the incentive for hospitals to make medical error prevention a higher priority.

News Coverage:

• "Charlie Dent, Leonard Lance Among Moderate Republicans Opposed To Government-Run Health Care" (Express-Times — May 26, 2009)
• "Vitale-Sweeney-Weinberg Bill To Publicize Hospital Errors Approved In Assembly" (PolitickerNJ — May 21, 2009)
• "Bill Requires State To Reveal Hospitals That Make Errors" (Star-Ledger — January 27, 2009)
• "Don't Conceal Medical Errors" (Asbury Park Press Editorial — July 22, 2008)
  
• AARP Video News Release — shedding light on the horrors of PMEs and calling for Health Commissioner Heather Howard to release to the public each NJ hospital's safety record.