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The ED is a common setting for the initial evaluation of emotional and behavioral disorders, including suicidal behavior or attempts. In the United States, approximately 2 million adolescents attempt suicide each year. As the number of visits by adolescents to the ED rises and the availability of outpatient mental health services diminishes, the ED physician must be not only able to stabilize the patient medically, but also should be comfortable with differentiating organic from psychiatric disease, performing a targeted psychosocial interview, initiating treatment, and arranging for disposition.
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Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are frequently encountered in clinical medicine. According to the Centers for Disease Control, approximately 2.8 million infections with Chlamydia trachomatis and 700,000 infections with Neisseria gonorrhea occur annually in the United States.
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Coding patterns for emergency services have been scrutinized in the press recently.
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In an effort to drive down health care expenditures, a key target of state legislatures and health care policy makers in recent years has been frequent users of the ED.
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While studies show that most people come to the ED because of an urgent or emergent medical concern, some people wind up in an emergency setting because they are not plugged in to the kind of social or medical resources that could more appropriately meet their needs.
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The Joint Commission (TJC) is in the process of developing new tools, solutions, and performance measures aimed at improving the processes used to transition patients from one health care setting to another.
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You know there is a problem when the average wait time to see a provider is in the four-to-five-hour range, and 3% to 7% of incoming patients are routinely leaving the ED without being seen (LWBS).
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While nurses have always had a presence in the emergency department (ED), the increasing prevalence and utilization of physician assistants (PAs) in EDs across the nation is generating a new and unique liability for emergency physicians (EPs). This article will familiarize the reader with pertinent legal concepts and recent cases that enlighten the issue of liability for ancillary staff in the ED.