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The nation's first senior emergency center, opened by Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, MD, is specifically tailored to meet the needs of a growing population of adults and provides care that goes beyond the typical emergency department assessment and treatment.
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To reduce legal risks, the best strategy is to "show diligence," says Linda M. Stimmel, JD, a partner with the Dallas-based law firm of Stewart Stimmel.
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When the ED leadership team at Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, MD, set out to improve throughput, the first thing they tackled was the line at the door, says Clark Willis, MD, medical director.
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Readmissions among all heart failure patients dropped by 50% in the first year of Saddleback Memorial Medical Center's comprehensive heart failure program, which focuses on a smooth transition between the hospital and the community.
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Recognizing that the transition between the short-term acute care hospital and a long-term acute care hospital (LTAC) is difficult for patients and families, Mesquite Specialty Hospital in Dallas has begun weekly orientation sessions to help family members understand what an LTAC is and how the services a patient will receive there are different from what happens in the short-term acute care hospital.
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Hospital case managers are involved with patients from admission through the entire episode of care and discharge, which puts them in a position to spot patient safety issues and work on ways to prevent them, says John Banja, PhD, professor of rehabilitation medicine, medical ethicist at Emory University's Center for Ethics and director of the Section on Ethics in Research at Emory's Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute.
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As health care reform rolls out, hospitals will be under more pressure to deliver care faster and more efficiently with better outcomes, coordinating care while patients are still in the hospital, and ensuring a smooth transition to the next level of care. And that's where case managers can make a difference, experts say.
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Body art visible tattoos, nose/lip/eyebrow/tongue piercings or even the dreaded open-toe/heel shoe or sandal, can arouse surprising passion in health care. Over the years I've heard variations of the comments below, be they factual or not, invariably ending with: "Can't you do anything about this?"
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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 time is coming when empowered patients armed with data-loaded devices and not afraid to speak up will be full partners in infection prevention, said Julie Gerberding, MD, MPH, the immediate past director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.