Hospital-acquired conditions explained by CMS

Hospital-acquired conditions explained by CMS

Hospital providers need to be fully aware of the new steps taken by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to report and prevent hospital-acquired conditions.

For more than one year, hospitals have been required to report on their Medicare claims whether any of eight selected conditions were present when patients were admitted to the hospital, and since Oct. 1, 2008, hospitals have had to report on additional conditions as well.

These Present On Admission (POA) indicators must be completed for every diagnosis on an inpatient acute care hospital claim.

CMS defines POA as those conditions that are present at the time the order for inpatient admission occurs, including conditions that occur during an outpatient encounter, including emergency department, observation, or outpatient surgery.

If patients at discharge have any of the reportable conditions that were not identified as POA, then the condition is considered hospital-acquired, according to CMS.

The conditions CMS has selected as reasonably preventable include: leaving a foreign object in a patient; having an air embolism enter patient's bloodstream; giving patient wrong blood in transfusion; falls and trauma; and fracture.