The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently proposed changes to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) regulations that would allow "community call" programs to be established by groups of hospitals in self-designated referral areas to help address the shortage of ED on-call specialists.
Crowding is increasingly becoming a factor in litigation involving emergency department care, putting nurses and physicians at increased risk for being named in a lawsuit.
Controversy continues to swirl around the appropriateness of emergency physicians writing holding orders (or bridge orders, as they are sometimes called) for admitted patients.
Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) is a state of metabolic decompensation, secondary to insulin deficiency/resistance that is coupled with counter-regulatory hormone excess and results in varying degrees of hyperglycemia, ketoacidemia, hypertonic dehydration, and sometimes, alterations in mental status.
How would you like to boast that one of your company's wellness programs got these results for diabetics: A 21% increase in employees achieving the American Diabetes Association goal of an A1C level under 7.0, an increase from 43.8% to 57.7% in participants meeting National Cholesterol Education Program goals for LDL cholesterol, and a 15.7% increase in the number of employees meeting recognized goals for systolic blood pressure?
Even if you offer a variety of costly programs to get employees to exercise, participation is probably not what you wish for.
For the first time, newly proposed guidance puts a number and a cost to the respirators needed to protect health care workers during an influenza pandemic: 480 respirators at a cost of about $240 to protect a single employee, or a single reusable elastomeric respirator with three filters at a cost of $40 per employee.
It has been 10 years since Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore created a latex task force to address the growing numbers of latex-sensitive employees.
Health care costs reduced $176 for every employee - a savings of $1.65 for every dollar spent on a comprehensive wellness program.
