Critical Access
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Trump Admin Targets Rural Healthcare Disparities
Telehealth expansion, innovative reimbursement model aim to help patients and providers in smaller communities.
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Data Reveal More About Patients Who Request Medical Assistance in Dying
More people are asking for medical assistance in dying, but surprisingly little is known about this population.
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Address Patients’ COVID-19 Fears Through Thoughtful Design Changes, Clear Messaging
While some state hospital associations are leveraging their collective power to reassure patients that accessing needed care is important and safe, there are steps individual hospitals and emergency departments can take, too.
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Clinical Leaders Urge Patients to Seek Care for Critical, Time-Sensitive Conditions
While COVID-19 continues surging in many regions, emergency departments across the country are confronting another significant problem: plummeting patient volumes. Many people with time-sensitive conditions such as stroke and heart attack are delaying or avoiding care, a reality that is leading to tragic results.
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Many Hospitals Lacked Ventilator Triage Policies When COVID-19 Pandemic Hit
More than half of institutions did not have ventilator triage policies in place when the pandemic arrived, according to the authors of a study.
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ED Administrators, Advocacy Orgs Search for Missing Patients
Recent steep declines in U.S. emergency department visits, attributed to fears about contracting COVID-19, alarm the healthcare industry.
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‘Code Critical’ Process Speeds Care to Critically Ill Patients Who Present to ED
In 2016, a suburban California emergency department began working on a new alert process designed to ensure medical patients not covered by alerts already in place would receive the same type of rapid, timely response that other alerts trigger. The resulting approach, dubbed “code critical,” has proven successful at accelerating care to a broad category of critically ill patients.
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Disciplinary Action, Terminations, Gag Orders: ‘Avalanche Effect’
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, hospitals suddenly had to determine how to ration scarce critical care resources. Hospitals could not change the fact they were caught without enough personal protective equipment (PPE) and could not immediately obtain more of it. However, they could control whether they responded ethically. Some hospitals imposed gag orders on staff, barring them from voicing concerns about PPE publicly. Nurses and physicians have been disciplined or threatened with termination for reporting inadequate PPE on social media.
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Making Critical Care Triage Policies Transparent to Patients, Community
Certain hospitals are including information on their critical care triage policies in admission packets to explain how care or supplies will be allocated if rationing becomes necessary. Some clinicians feel ethically obligated to inform everyone up front of the possibility. Others think it is better to do so only if and when it becomes necessary.
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Communicating with patients encouraged
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has launched an initiative with the Ad Council to encourage clinicians and patients to engage in effective two-way communication to ensure safer care and better health outcomes.