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To prepare for the new unannounced survey process, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is offering several new resources on its web site. Those resources include a computerized graphic presentation, questions and answers, and a video presentation.
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To meet the National Patient Safety Goal to reconcile medications across the continuum of care, one ED is finding success with a medication reconciliation form that it developed.
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Beginning this year, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization has added an emergency management committee meeting and a disaster tracer.
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If the current federal budget package is approved by the House of Representatives without significant changes, it could lead to decreased revenue for EDs, says Molly Collins Offner, MHSA, senior associate director of public policy in the Washington, DC, office of the American Hospital Association.
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The next generation in patient identification and electronic medical information is now unfolding in a growing group of EDs across the country. The ED managers who are using it are convinced it will prove invaluable in the not-too-distant future.
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A pacemaker is an electronic device that provides an electrical signal to stimulate the heart beat when the intrinsic pacemakers fail. The development and implementation of cardiac pacing and pacemaker generators has been well described and documented in many publications.
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Complaints pertaining to teeth are very common, and patients frequently utilize emergency departments (EDs) for their initial care. Most patients understand that definitive care must be provided by a dentist or oral surgeon, but either a lack of financial resources, inability to contact their dentist, severe pain, or acute trauma leads patients to EDs first.
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Ever present in the health care provider's training and practice is the continual responsibility to provide documentation. Although it is ever drummed into our heads that proper documentation is necessary for the purposes of billing, quality assurance, and risk management, documentation is also important in real time for the purposes of communication among caregivers. Not only must each health care practitioner record his/her own activities and findings related to a patient's care, but each practitioner also must take heed of every other provider's documentation.
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The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations has announced that for random unannounced surveys conducted in 2006, the fixed performance areas for hospitals are: assessment and care/service, medication management; patient safety; and the 2006 National Patient Safety Goals that are applicable to the services provided by the hospital.
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Question: The ED is the melting pot of the hospital, treating all clinical needs and all society strata. In the midst of this mixture are patients transitioning from outpatient status to the inpatient setting, many of whom stay in the ED for hours waiting for an available bed.
