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Even if continuous cardiac monitoring is ordered, ED patients may be taken off the monitor for transport or to go to the restroom and kept off the monitor due to oversight, warns Andrew Garlisi, MD, MPH, MBA, VAQSF, medical director for Geauga County EMS in Chardon, OH.
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Head trauma is a common presenting problem among emergency department (ED) patients. It has been estimated that 1-2 million Americans sustain traumatic brain injury (TBI) annually.
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Mental health experts believe that as with many acute medical conditions such as stroke and heart attack, early diagnosis and treatment can make a critical difference for patients with schizophrenia, potentially limiting the severity and progression of the disease.
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Every day patients flock to EDs with sore throats, headaches, and other non-emergent problems that are more in line with what you would expect a primary care provider (PCP) to handle.
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Hospitals that receive federal funds are required by law to offer language assistance to patients with limited English proficiency (LEP).
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Emergency departments in the United States are frequently confronted with trauma patients with varying degrees of injury.
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The ED is a common setting for the initial evaluation of emotional and behavioral disorders, including suicidal behavior or attempts. In the United States, approximately 2 million adolescents attempt suicide each year. As the number of visits by adolescents to the ED rises and the availability of outpatient mental health services diminishes, the ED physician must be not only able to stabilize the patient medically, but also should be comfortable with differentiating organic from psychiatric disease, performing a targeted psychosocial interview, initiating treatment, and arranging for disposition.
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Coding patterns for emergency services have been scrutinized in the press recently.
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In an effort to drive down health care expenditures, a key target of state legislatures and health care policy makers in recent years has been frequent users of the ED.
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While studies show that most people come to the ED because of an urgent or emergent medical concern, some people wind up in an emergency setting because they are not plugged in to the kind of social or medical resources that could more appropriately meet their needs.