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Your ED patient's bad outcome might have nothing to do with the fact that he or she was held in the hallway while awaiting an inpatient bed. However, it could impact the outcome of subsequent litigation against the ED.
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[This quarterly column on coding in the ED is written by Caral Edelberg, CPC, CCS-P, CHC, president of Edelberg Compliance Associates, Baton Rouge, LA. If there are coding issues you would like to see addressed in this column, contact Edelberg at phone: (225) 454-0154. E-fax: (225) 612-6904. E-mail:
[email protected].]
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Representatives at Emerus Emergency Hospitals, a licensed emergency specialty hospital company based in The Woodlands, TX, have been telling patients at several of its "24-hour EDs" for months now that if they are not seen by a physician within 15 minutes, the hospital will pay for their $1,000 visit. So far, the new policy is working quite well, say Emerus representatives.
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[Editor's note: This is the second in a two-part series on placing pharmacists in the ED. In our last installation, we examined the performance improvements that the University of Rochester (NY) Medical Center achieved as the result of placing a pharmacist inside the ED. In addition, we discuss how a pharmacist's recommendations to dispense a medication orally instead of using an IV enabled the ED to save a considerable amount of money while at the same time improving patient safety. In this issue, we look at additional benefits these pharmacists offer, from the perspective of ED nurses and physicians.]
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The Joint Commission is hoping that its suspension of a policy that triggers an "automatic" adverse decision if an organization fails to complete an acceptable root cause analysis in response to a sentinel event or its related measure of success within a specified time frame will encourage more self-reporting and advance root cause analysis activities.
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The Joint Commission has suspended its policy that triggers an "automatic" adverse decision if an organization fails to complete an acceptable root cause analysis in response to a sentinel event or its related measure of success within a specified time frame. The change is retroactively effective as of Jan. 1, 2010.
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The practice of emergency medicine is unique in that an emergency medicine physician acts as a gatekeeper. While treatment of a patient might be brief, initial examination and assessment often will dictate the course of the patient's treatment after admission to the hospital.
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Several years ago the security plans for the ED at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, OH, were significantly revamped. The process required strong teamwork between ED leadership and hospital security.
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Just as identify theft has been steadily increasing in the general populace, so has it grown in the medical setting, with the ED perhaps feeling the greatest impact of all.
