Will Medicare Drive Medical Errors (further) Underground?

I know I'm late on this, but I was just catching up with Eric Turkewitz's discussion on Medicare's decision to stop paying for the costs involved in preventable medical errors, and it reminded me of my first reaction when I saw the NYT story Sunday. Call me a cynic, but without a major enforcement component to this new plan, I wouldn't be surprised to see hospitals devote lots of resources not to preventing errors, but to covering them up. The threat of lawsuits has long provided hospitals and doctors with a financial incentive to avoid errors, but clearly that hasn't done much good.

Maybe there's more money involved in the Medicare payments than in lawsuits that will drive the health care system to change its ways, but if all the lawsuits I've read over the years are any indication, hospitals and doctors frequently go to great lengths to hide their involvement in botched care. Medicare ought to include some serious penalties for such behavior if they want this new strategy to improve the quality of health care.