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The ED management team at Botsford General Hospital in Chesterfield, MO, has adopted and adapted quality improvement principles from The Studer Group, a quality improvement consulting organization in Gulf Breeze, FL, to boost its patient satisfaction rates from the high 80s to the 99th percentile.
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A July 13, 2006, letter from Thomas E. Hamilton, the director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Survey and Certification Group, about proper handling of EMS ambulance patients has caused a stir in emergency medicine circles that still reverberates today, as confusion remains about exactly what CMS meant.
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The Joint Commission has issued an interim action that allows a pharmacist to conduct a retrospective review of medication orders within 48 hours when a pharmacist's prospective review is not performed.
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In terms of preparing your staff to handle a disaster, start by developing a good disaster plan, says Louise Kuhny, RN, MPH, MBA, CIC, associate director of standards interpretation at The Joint Commission, previously known as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
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A Category 3 tornado hits during a four-county disaster exercise that's been planned for two years. Although that scenario seems improbable, that's exactly what happened to hospitals in the Nashville, TN, area last year. The tornado hit the ground for 20 minutes and caused about 35 injuries and seven fatalities.
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A "homegrown" web-based tool called Web Emergency Medicine Analysis and Reporting System (WEBEMARS) has enabled ED managers at the 17 departments administered by Livingston, NJ-based Emergency Medical Associates (EMA) to readily access current data on their unit's performance, gaining valuable insights that have led to significant performance improvement.
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When is an LWOT (left without treatment) rate of 1% not good enough? Apparently, when you are the ED managers at Affinity Medical Center, Massilon, OH, campus. An aggressive new program has further reduced that rate by 37%.
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Could an ambulance diversion program work in your area? The answer is yes, according to one ED manager who co-chaired the San Diego Emergency Medical Service (EMS) Medical Oversight Committee (EMOC) that created a successful new diversion program in San Diego County.
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In the fall of 2001, ED diversion hours in San Diego County, CA, were averaging 4,006 a month, with a monthly average of 1,320 diverted ambulance patients. Area hospitals were on diversion status an average of one out of every four hours.
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Heres the other side of the impostors coin or to put it another way, an incident that proves things arent always what they seem.