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More than 900 hospitals have been certified as Primary Stroke Centers since The Joint Commission (TJC) and the American Heart Association (AHA)/American Stroke Association (ASA) introduced the Primary Stroke Center certification program back in 2003.
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One of the problems associated with the boarding of admitted patients in the ED is that the practice inevitably leads to increased diversion when the ED's capacity to care for new patients is diminished.
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Emergency department administrators are well aware that crowding in the ED is associated with poorer patient outcomes, longer hospital stays, and decreased patient satisfaction.
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Pertussis, commonly known as the "whooping cough," is an infection of the upper respiratory tract leading to a protracted cough illness. Emergency physicians should become familiar with the diagnosis and management of this disease, given the potential of pertussis to cause serious morbidity and mortality in young infants and protracted illness in adolescents and adults. Furthermore, diagnosing and treating pertussis in a timely manner has a large public health impact, given its extremely contagious nature.
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Tort reform advocates and legislators need to better understand the impact of the common law when drafting language to curtail frivolous litigation or establish damages caps.1 Two recent state Supreme Court cases, one from South Carolina and one from Missouri, dampen the cause of medical malpractice liability reform.
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When a teenage patient presented to the ED at University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) in Ann Arbor with unexplained pain in her thigh, the emergency physician (EP) did all the appropriate things to make her comfortable, stabilize the situation, and get her a referral quickly to other specialists, but did not arrive at a definitive diagnosis.
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An EKG revealed a womans obvious ST-elevation myocardial infarction, but she refused to go to the cardiac catheterization lab before speaking to her husband, who proved difficult to reach by phone.
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