Using a pediatric trigger tool to estimate total harm burden hospital-acquired conditions represent.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has successfully reduced preventable harm from hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) through financial penalties to hospitals. Hospitals nationwide have invested substantial resources in reducing the HACs on the CMS nonpayment list, raising concern about whether institutions may be neglecting other types of preventable harm. Researchers used an all-cause harm trigger tool to assess what proportion of harms that occurred at six children's hospitals were HACs versus harms excluded from the CMS list. Only 58 of 240 harms were considered HACs. Some common harms identified outside the scope of HACs were intravenous catheter infiltration, surgical complications, and pain. Prior WebM&M commentaries have discussed harms from hospital-acquired infections as well as the unintended consequences of public hospital quality reporting.