Nursing mistakes that patients pay for?

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Specializes in Pulmonary.

Hi all,

I have an assignment on mistakes that nurses make that patients pay for either on their bill or in the long run through higher healthcare costs.

The example in class was dropping an aspirin on the floor and having to waste it. We have to be able to call several local hospitals and get the costs on these items.

I need a couple of ideas to take back to my group. I feel like never working in the healthcare setting is hindering me on this one. I thought about either gauze dressings or sterile kits, but don't know if hospitals would give me info on these. What do you all think?

Thanks in advance

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Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Good luck in trying to gedt this info. Contact the business office.

info is usally guarded like Fort Knox!

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What about lapses in infection control measures like handwashing? You probably won't be able to call a hospital and ask them how much it costs to be admitted to the ICU with septic shock, but on the web you could probably easily find some national statistics on nosocomial infections.

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what about when a medication is ordered for a patient say, four times a day. Then after the second dose, the doc changes the med to a different med, also four times a day. The patient pays for all eight doses even if they didn't take them all.

doctors who give overkill orders and test for everything even tho they don't necessarily need to (good luck getting info on that one lol)

The patient who gets staph or strep skin infection post-surgery and ends up in ICU. Tons of medical costs incurred from what should have never happened.

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One that I found interesting during clinicals is foley and straight cath kits. If the nurse misses and contaminates that cath it has to be discarded and a new one obtained. on one particularly hard to cath patient there was 4 kits used becouse the individual caths were not available on the floor and the patient was charged for all 4 of them.

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Specializes in ER, NICU, NSY and some other stuff.

Personally I would rather pay for 4 cath kits than the infection from somebody who inserted a contaminated foley.

Ifa doc dc's a med it should be sent back to pharmacy and then the patients is credited back for what is returned.

Many items these days are not individually chargeable anymore per medicare guidelines. They are now included in the basic acharges. Our ER chargesheets are constantly changing based on this info.

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Specializes in Maternal - Child Health.

This wasn't a nursing error, but a radiology one: My daughter went to the hospital for x-rays for a suspected fractured clavicle. The tech did a shoulder series by mistake. I instructed her to make sure I wasn't billed for them. I also called my insurance company and gave them a "heads up" not to pay for a shoulder series.

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