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One mother came into the emergency department at Greater Baltimore Medical Center frantic and upset because her small child was very ill. She was visibly frustrated with the registration process, until the patient access representative performing the registration expressed concern.
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The staggering burden of heath care associated infections (HAIs) in lives and dollars is "unacceptable," but changing the status quo is difficult because the health care system is woefully skewed toward treatment rather than prevention, Thomas Frieden, MD, MPH, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said recently in Atlanta at the opening of the Fifth Decennial International Conference on HAIs.
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At DuBois (PA) Regional Medical Center, employees were failing N95 fit tests in alarming numbers. In the cardiology department, about 46% of employees failed fit-tests even after trying a variety of models and sizes. Things weren't much better in anesthesia (35%), cardiovascular ICU (34%), or the emergency department (26%).
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At the Infected Health Care Worker Program in the Minnesota Department of Health, nurse specialist Stephen Moore, RN, MPH, has a case load of 150 health care workers who have HIV, hepatitis B or C. Some are administrators not involved in patient care. Only about 20 are nurses, doctors, or dentists who perform invasive procedures that are considered exposure-prone according to a 1991 guideline from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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According to a new guideline from the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the following recommendations apply to health care workers infected with HIV or hepatitis B or C
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New Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) guidelines for health care workers infected with bloodborne viruses include the following procedures at greatest risk of transmission to patients.
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Do some health care workers infected with HIV or hepatitis B or C pose a risk to their patients? Should they be restricted from performing exposure-prone procedures?
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The decrease in the rate of ED patients leaving before treatment at King's Daughters Medical Center in Ashland, KY, from 5% to 0.5% was not achieved by the ED alone. It took a concerted effort on the part of all of the major departments that interface with the ED.
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Recognizing that ED wait times and throughput are affected by the entire hospital, the leaders at King's Daughters Medical Center in Ashland, KY, engaged all the departments that interface with the ED and slashed the rate at which ED patients leave before treatment from 5% to 0.5%.
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In the face of steadily increasing volumes (13,000 between 2008 and 2009), the emergency department (ED) at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, MD, has improved all of its operating statistics, achieving a door-to-bed time of three minutes and a door-to-doc time of 21 minutes.
