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With the proliferation of medical devices in recent years, hospital providers are now bombarded with a cacophony of sounds, signals, and other information emanating from these ubiquitous machines.
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Sometimes just making people aware of their performance is all that is necessary to significantly improve care. Investigators at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) found this to be precisely the case when they attempted to use this approach to improve door-to-needle times for stroke patients who presented to the ED for care at UCSF Medical Center.
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The face of health care compliance is rapidly changing. Having spent the past week attending the largest health care compliance gathering in the country, I am convinced that no one is immune to payer audits.
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Children frequently present with infections of the neck. A comprehensive understanding of both superficial and deep infections of the neck is essential for clinical practice. Accurate recognition and early definitive management can minimize the risk of subsequent complications.
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When researchers at University Hospital Basel in Switzerland set out to study triage of elderly patients in their ED, they were surprised to find that 22.5% were undertriaged, reports Christian Nickel, MD, one of the studys authors and an emergency physician (EP).
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Missed acute myocardial infarction (AMI) cases are usually top of mind when it comes to ED malpractice litigation, but other lesser-known clinical pitfalls also result in claims, warns Martin Ogle, MD, FACEP, senior partner and vice president of CEP America, an Emeryville, CA-based provider of acute care management and staffing solutions.
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The first Dodging the Bullet article was written and published in the September 2011 issue of ED Legal Letter. In the earlier article, as well as this article, a series of actual clinical cases are presented that could have turned out differently if the wrong management decision had been made. The goals of this article remain the same as the earlier one: to glean important points of educational and teaching value from each of the reported high risk cases; and to highlight the fact that clinical misadventures are often a single judgment call away from a potential tragedy.
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While new requirements are not always welcomed in the ED, to be sure, managers and front-line providers do have reason to feel optimistic about new standards, unveiled by The Joint Commission (TJC), regarding how hospitals manage patient flow.
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Billing for the services provided by teaching physicians (TPs) continues to create problems for providers, coders, and compliance professionals due the many faces of documentation provided through electronic medical records (EMRs), template records, and handwritten charts.
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Health care has lagged behind other industries when it comes to leveraging the power of information technology (IT). However, in the race to catch up, which has been accelerated by $20 billion in federal stimulus dollars, ergonomists warn that hospitals and other health care entities are not giving adequate consideration to the potential for IT-related musculoskeletal injuries.