ED Management
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Patient passports aim to speed appropriate care for medically complex children presenting to ED
A medically complex child can decompensate quickly — even if he or she appears to be quite healthy. But grasping the urgency of such a patient’s condition can be especially difficult for triage nurses in the ED who may have never laid eyes on the child before, let alone reviewed his or her lengthy medical history. It’s a problem that Mattel Children’s Hospital at Ronald Regan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, CA, is attempting to solve through the development and dissemination of what administrators are calling a patient passport.
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Mount Sinai leverages smartphone technology, aiming to boost care, coordination of ED patients while also trimming costs
Using telemedicine in the care and treatment of stroke patients is widely used and accepted at this point; the approach facilitates quick access to expert consultations when time to treatment is a critical factor.
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Early data suggest new protocol to risk-stratify chest pain patients, potentially preserving resources without compromising safety
Emergency providers are accustomed to seeing patients with chest pain. In fact, it is the second most common complaint in the ED. However, while more than half of these patients are either admitted or placed in an observation unit for rounds of expensive tests, a cardiac cause is ruled out most of the time.
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Study: Bacterium associated with rare “forgotten” disease also responsible for more sore throats than Group A strep in young adults
A new study suggests that Fusobacterium necrophorum, the bacterium associated with a “forgotten disease,” is, in fact, the cause of more sore throats than the more commonly considered Group A strep bacterium among the college-aged population. Researchers, led by Robert Centor, MD, a professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and a noted authority on sore throats, strongly urge frontline providers, such as those who serve in EDs across the country, to consider F. necrophorum when evaluating young adults with pharyngitis, and to treat accordingly.1
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New center offers a unique venue for research, training
While the Massey Emergency Critical Care Center (EC3) at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) in Ann Arbor has only just opened its doors, planning for the unit has been a multi-year, multidisciplinary effort, explains Jennifer Gegenheimer-Holmes, RN, BSN, MHSA, CEN, the director of operations for the Department of Emergency Medicine at UMHS. “We created an emergency critical care advisory group [which includes] the medical directors of the adult ICUs here, respiratory therapy, and our physician leads within the ED,” she says.
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New type of center focuses on caring for the most critically ill patients, decompressing ED that serves patients at the upper end of the acuity spectrum
Much of the discussion surrounding emergency medicine seems to focus on how to keep lower-acuity patients out of the ED, or at least how to move them through to discharge faster. While it is true that many EDs see a high percentage of low-acuity or fast-track patients, there are also EDs that are overwhelmed with patients at the other end of the acuity spectrum. The University of Michigan Health System’s (UMHS) adult ED in Ann Arbor is a case in point.
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The role of emergency medicine in curbing, preventing measles outbreaks
It’s hard to discuss the current measles outbreaks without pointing out what experts see as the primary reason for the recurrence of a disease that had been largely vanquished, at least in this country.
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In Measles Outbreak, EDs Bolster Screening Procedures
Frontline health care personnel need to spot it quickly to prevent potential transmissions to unvaccinated and immunocompromised patients.
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Hospitals Financially Penalized for Readmissions Outside Their Control
A new study says it’s unfair and possibly counter-productive.
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TJC: New portal offers access to infection prevention resources, health care-associated infections
The Joint Commission has unveiled a new Infection Prevention and Healthcare-associated Infection (HAI) portal that combines what used to be two separate online resources: www.jointcommission.org/hai.aspx.