Medicare, the government insurance program for the elderly and disabled, will stop paying hospitals for the extra costs of treating patients who are injured because of their own mistakes.

The federal government rolled out a program that holds back several payments from health care facilities that want to bill Medicare for the costs of the incidents that occur when patients are in their care.

Starting this week, Medicare will stop reimbursing hospitals for 10 specific errors, or never events, which are supposed to be always avoided if hospital employees are cautious about their patients. These medical errors include wrong blood given in transfusions, air injected into veins and sponges left in a patient after performing a surgery.

This change of no more paying for certain hospital, doctor and staff errors is part of a federal government plan designed to enhance health care quality. This will be done by using a system that compensates good medical practices and publicly shows how well health care facilities personnel do their job.

"This has been something we have been working on for a long time," asserted Jackie Aragon, St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center's senior director of quality risk and regulatory services. "Patient safety is always our primary focus."

According to the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID), hospital infections kill each year more people than AIDS, breast cancer, and auto accidents combined. About 2,000,000 American patients contract infections in such facilities, and approximately 100,000 die as a consequence.

Regarding Medicare’s new policy, Dr. Betsy McCaughey, RID's chairman and a former New York lieutenant governor, said "if you take your car in for an oil change, and they dent the fender, you don't pay for that repair, the garage does."