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ASCs Can Improve Reporting Culture
Recently, The Joint Commission issued four basic steps that healthcare organizations can take, starting with establishing trust.
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Thanks to High-Deductible Plans, ASCs Must View Patient as Payer
Interested in what the rise in patient deductibles means for surgery centers’ bottom line? Read on.
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Document, Assess, Audit: Improving Infection Prevention Procedures
ASCs can improve their infection prevention processes is by keeping their policies and procedures aligned with standards, regulations, and nationally recognized guidelines. Experts explain several additional steps centers could take to improve their overall infection prevention program.
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Two Recent Infection Breaches Highlight Danger of Complacency
Surgery centers should refocus on infection prevention efforts in light of recent reports of breaches involving HIV, hepatitis, and the potentially fatal carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE). These problems point to the need for ambulatory surgery centers to follow the highest level of infection prevention standards and guidelines.
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Pioneering Community Hospitals Address Opioid Epidemic
Community hospitals work with fewer resources than large, academic medical centers. However, these facilities can create effective treatment programs for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD). In fact, experts state that when patients with OUD present to the ED, or are admitted as inpatients, there is a powerful opportunity to place them on the road to recovery. Still, clinicians in these settings need to engage with their leaders to set up a positive path.
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Paramedics, Screening Protocols, and Involuntary Psychiatric Holds
While there is no simple solution to ED crowding caused by a backup of patients with behavioral health concerns, a new study offers intriguing results on what could be part of the answer for at least some hospitals.
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Critical Access Hospital EDs Reap Savings by Using Advanced Practice Providers, Virtual Physicians
Thanks in part to a little-noticed policy shift by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, there is fresh evidence that telemedicine can offer rural hospitals a cost-effective solution to the serious challenges they face in trying to recruit and retain physicians to cover their EDs. Further, while efforts to build effective telemedicine networks in the emergency medicine arena have struggled, one network based in Sioux Falls, SD, is in expansion mode, with 185 hospitals in 13 states already hooked up to the network’s hub.
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Prehospital Providers Play Starring Role in Push to Regionalize Care of STEMI Patients
A push to regionalize the care and treatment of patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) gains steam. Investigators documented improved time to treatment results and a significant decline in mortality among patients treated at sites adopting a regionalized approach. The data come from the Regional Systems Accelerator-2 project in which key stakeholders in 12 regions pledged to work together to improve STEMI care.
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Interdisciplinary Care Rounds: A Key Strategy for Improving Case Management Outcomes, Part 1
In recent years, emerging best practice care rounding models have changed the face of how healthcare professionals perform rounds. Although these models result in better outcomes for patients, they remain an elusive, often misunderstood tool.
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Physical Therapy Can Be Alternative to Opioids
Brief treatment with opioids post-surgery and opioid treatment for cancer pain still work well, but clinicians increasingly are looking for alternatives for chronic pain.