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Forty percent of hospital readmissions within 30 days come through the ED, according to an analysis of data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project state inpatient and ED databases on 4,028,555 patients discharged from acute care hospitals in California, Florida, and Nebraska between July 1, 2008, and September 31, 2009.1
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Not surprisingly, if a consultant is unavailable and a bad outcome occurs, the emergency physician (EP) is potentially a defendant in any subsequent medical malpractice lawsuit, says Damian D. Capozzola, JD, an attorney with Crowell & Moring, LLP, in Los Angeles, CA.
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Whenever an individual enters an ambulance (or medical helicopter) owned and operated by a hospital, the federal government deems the person to have come to the hospitals emergency department for purposes of triggering the hospitals obligations under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).1
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NIV is increasingly accepted as an alternative to endotracheal intubation (ETI) for the management of respiratory failure, both acute and chronic.
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Most emergency physicians (EPs) would never consider leaving a patients chart completely blank, as theyre well aware of the resulting liability risks, but caring for an ED colleague without documentation is no different, according to Martin Ogle, MD, FACEP, senior partner and vice president of CEP America, an Emeryville, CA-based provider of acute care staffing solutions.
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Is a parent refusing recommended care for a minor patient in the ED?
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Was a patient transferred without being intubated first because the emergency physician (EP) wasnt comfortable managing a difficult airway?
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Informed refusal is the antithesis of informed consent, a natural extension of the doctrine. Informed consent is discussed in great detail in the medical, legal, and risk-management literature; whereas informed refusal has received less attention.
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If a patient deteriorates because of a transport and later sues, concerns will inevitably arise that the emergency physician (EP) didnt stabilize the patient prior to transport, or that the patient should not have been transferred, says John Tafuri, MD, FAAEM, regional director of TeamHealth Cleveland (OH) Clinic and chief of staff at Fairview Hospital, also in Cleveland.
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Two days after bombs went off near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, another horrific disaster rocked the tiny community of West, TX. In that incident, a reported fire at a fertilizer plant was followed by a huge explosion that leveled four blocks of the city. The blast killed 14 people, most of whom were emergency responders, and injured more than 200 others.