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With an ever increasing nursing shortage coupled with increased patient volumes, you may believe its impossible to cut labor costs in your ED. Not so, says Laura Guerrieri, RN, MBA, director of emergency services at Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park, IL.
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Would you like to cut door-to-treatment times for patients with acute coronary syndrome and acute myocardial infarction by up to 15 minutes? Put together a Chest Pain Tackle Box, recommends Marilyn Swinford, RN, director of emergency and outpatient services at Saint Joseph Hospital in Lexington, KY.
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Do you worry about unsafe staffing levels, a shortage of experienced nurses, a lack of trust between administration and staff, long work hours, and systems that dont promote safety and efficiency? If so, you have new ammunition to call for dramatic changes in your ED.
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Following are sample responses recommended by Shelley Cohen, RN, CEN, a member of the Emergency Nurses Associations task force on the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.
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The final version of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act says an ED is any department or facility of the hospital, whether situated on or off the main hospital campus, that:
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Question: Ive heard the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued instructions that require us to provide emergency physicians more detail on what procedures are billed under their names. How is this going to affect billing for my ED?
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These were some other key findings from the diversion study released recently by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) in Washington, DC.
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A project that started out as a response to post-9/11 bioterrorism fears is turning out to have much more practical everyday applications, say two ED managers who have pioneered the use of a system that monitors for unusual patterns or patient surges. While still valuable for detecting terrorist attacks, the system can reveal more mundane but useful information in any ED, they say.
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The EDs at St. Charles Mercy in Oregon, OH, and St. Anne Mercy in Toledo have adopted a streamlined triage system to shorten waiting times, and managers report that it has been very effective without compromising patient safety.
