And if Your Heart Still Doesn't Work, We'll Fix It -- Free!

That a person buying a new TV is offered better warranties and customer support plans than someone going in for surgery is, when you stop and think about it, ridiculous.

A Pennsylvania health group is trying to change that: they're offering surgeries at a flat-rate price that includes free follow-up care for 90 days. By doing so, they hope to encourage doctors to do the job right the first time.

Since Geisinger began its experiment in February 2006, focusing on elective heart bypass surgery, it says patients have been less likely to return to intensive care, have spent fewer days in the hospital and are more likely to return directly to their own homes instead of a nursing home. [...]

In almost no other field would consumers tolerate the frequency of error that is common in medicine, Dr. Berwick said, and Geisinger has managed to reduce the rate significantly. “Getting everything right is really, really hard,” he said. [...]

Under the typical system, missing an antibiotic or giving poor instructions when a patient is released from the hospital results in a perverse reward: the chance to bill the patient again if more treatment is necessary. As a result, doctors and hospitals have little incentive to ensure they consistently provide the treatments that medical research has shown to produce the best results.

Researchers estimate that roughly half of American patients never get the most basic recommended treatments — like an aspirin after a heart attack, for example, or antibiotics before hip surgery.

In Bid for Better Care, Surgery With a Warranty [New York Times]

Image: National Institutes of Health (the same folks who illustrated my grade-school workbooks, apparently)*