Senate passes bill requiring greater health care transparency

By Cy Ryan

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 | 7:32 p.m.

CARSON CITY – Without dissent, the state Senate on Tuesday approved a bill to allow Nevadans to compare hospitals’ rates of unexpected medical outcomes such as patient infections, deaths and physical injury.

Under the present law, the number of so-called “sentinel events” are reported as a total, but not hospital by hospital. The bill would make the hospital breakdowns available on the Internet.

SB 264, which goes to the Assembly, also requires hospitals to report information about the readmission of patients to the hosital, if the return was the result of a preventable condition related to the original admission.

The Senate also approved a bill requiring medical facilities to post in a public place information about infections contracted by the patients in intermediate care and skilled nursing facilities.

Each medical facility’s patient safety plan would also be posted by the state on the Internet.

SB 339 now goes to the Assembly.