Articles Tagged With: ED
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The Face of the ED Boarding Crisis Is a Child’s
The boy was 9 years old, wearing makeshift operating room garb that included cut-off paper scrubs. His parents did not want him. The Department of Social Services said there was nowhere to place him. His last four “homes” had been EDs, including one that kept him for months. Given such tragic incidents, ACEP and the Emergency Nurses Association are aggressively lobbying Congress to address the situation. They gathered on Capitol Hill to underscore the crisis and push for passage of the Improving Mental Health Access from the Emergency Department Act.
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ET3 Pilot Hailed as Big Step Toward Fully Leveraging EMS
In January 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched a five-year pilot program called Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport (ET3), an approach that enables participating EMS programs to connect some patients with lower-acuity problems to emergency providers via telemedicine at the scene. Most participants are excited about leveraging the approach to accelerate needed care to patients, decompress EDs, and maximize the skills of the EMS workforce.
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Harsh Criticism for New Report on ED Diagnostic Errors
New research that might have injected renewed vigor into improving diagnostic performance in the ED has instead prompted much uproar. In the emergency medicine community, that discussion has been overshadowed by biting criticism about the data and the methodologies investigators used to reach their conclusions — and what some are calling unfair blame placed at the feet of emergency providers.
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Effectively Intervening with Patients Facing Housing Instability
The notion that housing is healthcare stems from a growing body of research that links housing instability with higher rates of morbidity and mortality. There is a moral and humanitarian case for healthcare organizations to engage on the housing issue, but there also is a business case. But precisely how healthcare organizations should go about this work is not yet well established. Thus, IHI has partnered with Community Solutions, a nonprofit organization that is working to end homelessness, to examine how healthcare can play an effective role in addressing the problem.
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How Case Managers Can Improve SDOH Assessments
Case managers can use several different tactics to improve their assessments of social determinants of health. These may require extra time, but they can yield big rewards in terms of patients’ health and preventing readmissions.
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No Liability for Telemedicine Company or Hospital Over Stroke Treatment
This case confirms the importance of timely treatment and how providers can defend against claims of failure to provide such treatment. Frequently, a patient’s condition requires time-sensitive treatment, and the failure to do so may constitute medical malpractice if a similar physician under such circumstances would provide that timely care.
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Hospital EDs May See Legal Issues After Abortion Ruling
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, sending the issue of abortion rights back to the states, could lead to difficult legal situations for some EDs. Risk managers should consider their state laws and plan for potential issues. One of the first issues to consider is how laws restricting abortion intersect with EMTALA.
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Staffing Shortages Could Increase Liability Risks
Staffing shortages can cause a wide range of problems within a healthcare facility. Most of those issues can lead to greater liability risks. Risk managers are struggling to alleviate those risks even as the staffing challenge gets progressively worse. -
An ED-Friendly Screening Tool to Identify Potentially Violent Patients
Considering violence is a continuing concern in the emergency setting, there is high interest in new mechanisms that can identify potentially violent patients at the front end of their care encounters. This way, safeguards or preventive measures can be activated to keep providers and other patients safe. However, any such tool needs to be brief and easily integrated into the workflow of a busy ED.
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New SBAR Method Improves Handoffs in Texas Hospital
A nursing team at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio developed a new process for handing off patients from the ED to a telemetry unit that improved patient care and decreased the number of rapid responses for recent transfers.