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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has produced an evidence-based tool to help hospitals evaluate their disaster training drills. Called Evaluation of Hospital Disaster Drills: A Module-Based Approach, it is designed to help hospitals identify strengths and weaknesses in their responses during a disaster drill.
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Poor communication in the ED can have dire consequences. In fact, poor communication between health care professionals is the root cause of nearly seven of 10 sentinel events, according to the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and nowhere is communication more critical than in the ED. According to the Joint Commission, there were a total of nearly 500 sentinel events in 2003 and more than 400 in 2002.
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One of the issues constantly plaguing ED managers is the hidden bed a precious commodity when a crunch is on. But there are a number of methods that can help identify those beds sooner, says Marty Karpiel, FACHE, FHFMA, president of Karpiel Consulting Group in Long Beach, CA.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued interpretive guidelines for the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) final rule that took effect last November.
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Ninety-three percent of sputum isolates from a single long-term care facility were resistant to quinolones. Epidemiologic study showed an association with prior receipt of levofloxacin. Strains were closely related by pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis, indicating patient to patient spread of a resistant clone.
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In what may be a harbinger of a changing host preference, it was found that over one-half of cases of malaria in an area of Malaysian Borneo were caused by Plasmodium knowlesi, monkey pathogen. Such cases are likely to go unrecognized because of the great difficulty in distinguishing this organism from Plasmodium malariae by microscopy.
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The following is a summary of selected abstracts from 3 meetings. The 43rd Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (ICAAC) met in Chicago September 14-17, 2003. The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) met in San Diego October 9-12, 2003. The American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene met in Philadelphia December 3-7, 2003.
