New York's Medicaid program has announced that beginning in October 2008, it will deny reimbursement for 14 "never events." If a patient suffers one of these adverse events while admitted to the hospital, Medicaid will not pay the hospital to treat the patient's injuries or illness that result from the adverse event. The Medicaid list of "never events" is more extensive than Medicare's current list of 8 non-reimbursable hospital acquired conditions. CMS has proposed expanding its list to add an additional 9 categories of conditions. Some of the events on the list seem too broad. The announcement does not cite to a proposed regulation or include any information about how this new policy will be implemented. For example, the Medicaid list includes "medication errors." Will all medication errors impact the hospital's Medicaid reimbursement or only those that cause serious injury? Hopefully, DOH will clarify what it means before the new policy goes into effect.