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There's no doubt that when the Bon Secours system in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia launched a new "no wait" policy for its EDs, it was hoping to improve its brand and attract more patients.
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The headlines of late might well have blared their own version of Paul Revere's warning: "The bed bugs are coming! The bed bugs are coming!" TV networks have run special reports on how bed bugs have been "invading" U.S. hospitals, and as the front door to these facilities, EDs have had their share of challenges.
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The creation of a new area to quickly assess homeless and uninsured individuals, many requiring behavioral health services, has helped ease pressure on EDs in the Lee Memorial Health System in Fort Myers, FL. It has also earned the system a 2010 AHA NOVA Award for "Community-Based Alternatives to the Emergency Room."
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Just as identify theft has been steadily increasing in the general populace, so has it grown in the medical setting, with the ED perhaps feeling the greatest impact of all.
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Several years ago the security plans for the ED at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, OH, were significantly revamped. The process required strong teamwork between ED leadership and hospital security.
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The practice of emergency medicine is unique in that an emergency medicine physician acts as a gatekeeper. While treatment of a patient might be brief, initial examination and assessment often will dictate the course of the patient's treatment after admission to the hospital.
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The Joint Commission has suspended its policy that triggers an "automatic" adverse decision if an organization fails to complete an acceptable root cause analysis in response to a sentinel event or its related measure of success within a specified time frame. The change is retroactively effective as of Jan. 1, 2010.
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The Joint Commission is hoping that its suspension of a policy that triggers an "automatic" adverse decision if an organization fails to complete an acceptable root cause analysis in response to a sentinel event or its related measure of success within a specified time frame will encourage more self-reporting and advance root cause analysis activities.
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[Editor's note: This is the second in a two-part series on placing pharmacists in the ED. In our last installation, we examined the performance improvements that the University of Rochester (NY) Medical Center achieved as the result of placing a pharmacist inside the ED. In addition, we discuss how a pharmacist's recommendations to dispense a medication orally instead of using an IV enabled the ED to save a considerable amount of money while at the same time improving patient safety. In this issue, we look at additional benefits these pharmacists offer, from the perspective of ED nurses and physicians.]
