Hospital Management
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ID Doc: COVID-19 Can Be Controlled, Not Eradicated
Monica Gandhi, MD, MPH, is associate division chief of the HIV, Infectious Diseases, and Global Medicine at UCSF/San Francisco General Hospital. She has followed the COVID-19 pandemic closely. Hospital Employee Health sought Gandhi’s thoughts on the end of the Public Health Emergency.
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COVID-19: CMS Ends Vaccine Mandate for HCWs
The end of the COVID-19 national Public Health Emergency brought a highly controversial issue to a relatively quiet hiatus: Healthcare workers are no longer federally mandated to receive the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has ended the requirement, which in any case did not apply to boosters or the bivalent vaccines.
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Emergency Departments Inundated with Crowding, ‘Boarding,’ Violence
Amid an epidemic of violence, America’s EDs have become overwhelmed by long waits and “boarding,” a haphazard way station for the lost: psychiatric patients, walking wounded, those arriving by emergency transport, and those who deferred treatment during the pandemic, all awaiting an inpatient bed or a transfer. The American College of Emergency Physicians and many other co-signing medical groups described the problem in a letter to President Biden.
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ET3 Pilot Hailed as Big Step Toward Fully Leveraging EMS
In January 2021, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services launched a five-year pilot program called Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport (ET3), an approach that enables participating EMS programs to connect some patients with lower-acuity problems to emergency providers via telemedicine at the scene. Most participants are excited about leveraging the approach to accelerate needed care to patients, decompress EDs, and maximize the skills of the EMS workforce.
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Remote Facilities Can Avoid Unnecessary Pediatric Transfers by Leveraging Telemedicine
When critically ill children present to EDs in rural or community hospitals that lack access to specialty pediatric care, the solution often is to transfer them to a regional pediatric facility, which could be hours away from a patient’s home. This creates travel burdens and added expense for families and payors. But new research suggests that at least some of these interfacility transfers can be safely avoided by incorporating telemedicine consultations with pediatric specialists.
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Care Collaboration Helps Patients with At-Risk Heart Failure Illness
Researchers found social support and care affordability are important to obtain better outcomes among patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction.
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A Guide to Training Nurses on Transitional Care
It is challenging to find a tailor-made educational and training program for registered nurses to learn transitional care. A VA hospital created its own program, called the Transitions Nurse Training Program.
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Care Coordination Training Works Well for VA Hospitals
One of the challenges facing health systems as patients are moved from the hospital to another healthcare facility is how to make these transitions as safe as possible — especially in rural and underserved areas. A Veterans Affairs hospital has found a possible solution through its Transitions Nurse Training Program.
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Communication in Care Transition Process Needs Improvement
The care transition process is challenging, especially for patients with multiple complex conditions. To provide the best care to high-risk patients, case managers, community providers, and clinicians need to optimize communication. Case managers can improve the process through quality improvement efforts that focus on overcoming dialogue challenges and identifying providers’ communication preferences.
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How Case Managers Can Help Patients Reduce Heat Risk
Extreme heat events can become cluster death events. Case managers and health systems can help their patients — especially older patients with heart and/or lung disease — to prevent heat illness.