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Increasing payer scrutiny over diagnostic interpretations and continued belt-tightening at the private payer level has resulted in a resurfacing of the EKG interpretation payment issue for emergency physicians. There is no doubt that the interpretation of diagnostic tests for ED patients is an invaluable service.
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While the U.S. Supreme Court has settled the issue of constitutionality, President Obama's signature health reform legislation, the Accountable Care Act (ACA), still faces significant political headwinds that could chip away at provisions in the landmark health care law.
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Hospitals and EDs across the country continue to struggle with how to most effectively identify and treat patients who present with sepsis or develop the condition sometime after they have been admitted.
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This paper reports on the findings of a systematic literature review on noise and noise-reduction strategies in the intensive care unit (ICU).
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Arnold and colleagues at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis performed a 6-year retrospective cohort study of patients with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) documented ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), diagnosed by accepted clinical and quantitative culture criteria, that was caused by either Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA) and Acinetobacter baumannii(AB).
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The intensive care unit (ICU) can be immensely stressful for caregivers and can lead to burnout that results from chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors in the environment.
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Although current guidelines recommend delaying neuroprognostication during therapeutic hypothermia following resuscitation from cardiac arrest, this review of 55 consecutive patients so managed found that a "poor prognosis" designation was arrived at during the hypothermia period in most of them, including six patients who were eventually discharged with a favorable neurologic outlook.
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Wunsch and associates describe two patients who suffered respiratory arrest requiring intubation and mechanical ventilation while receiving polymyxin B.
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In this issue: Statins and diabetes risk; new treatment guideline for diabetes; new pertussis vaccine recommendation; antibiotics and rhinosinusitis; fluoroquinolones and cystitis; and FDA actions.
