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Question: Under what conditions can a tertiary care center that usually receives patients refuse transfer?
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When an intruder with a rifle entered Alaska Regional Hospital in Anchorage on March 10, 2004, the ED staff followed the hospitals procedures, which confined him to a corridor leading to the ED and kept ED staff and patients from being harmed. The gunman eventually shot himself, became a patient in the ED, and died from his wounds.
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Under a proposed rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the nations EDs will see payment rate increases of between 3.2% and 5% for services provided.
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Although purchasing a new computed tomography (CT) scanner and associated software can cost upward of $1 million (used and/or refurbished machines may cost half that), money may not be the biggest obstacle to putting a CT scanner in your ED, say experts.
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Sooner or later, your emergency department will be the site of some type of construction project, whether it is a full-scale renovation or a relatively small repair job. If you think your ED is hectic now, just imagine a bunch of construction workers tearing out walls with sledgehammers and sawing lumber while your physicians and staff try to continue with patient care.
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Jon Huddy, managing principal of FreemanWhite, a Charlotte, NC-based firm that specializes in health care facility design, offers these tips for surviving construction in your ED.
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If you already are working to optimize the care of cardiac patients in your ED, seeking accreditation as a chest pain center can be a good way to draw attention to your efforts, improve capacity, and make sure you maintain those standards over time.
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This is the second of a three-part series covering the top five issues that lead to malpractice claims in the ED and how you can address them. The January 2004 issue of ED Management addressed chest pain, and this months installment involves headache and abdominal pain.
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A dedicated billing analyst for your ED can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars that goes straight to the bottom line instead of just flying out the window, say two managers who have added about $300,000 a year.
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The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) in Irving, TX, has joined more than 40 organizations endorsing a new universal protocol to standardize pre-surgery procedures for verifying the correct patient, the correct procedure, and the correct surgical site.