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If your patient is abusing narcotic pain medications, he or she isn't likely to come out and tell you this. However, ED visits involving misuse or abuse of pharmaceuticals nearly doubled during the past five years, according to a new report, totaling about 1.2 million visits in 2009, compared to 627,000 in 2004.
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ED nurses at St. Elizabeth Healthcare Florence (KY) have cared for several healthy patients under age 35 with no history or family history of heart disease, who were having a cardiac event, reports Ben Brooks, RN, BSN.
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Have you just placed a urinary catheter in an ED patient? If so, possible complications include urosepsis, septicemia, trauma to the urethra or bladder, and urethral perforation, warns Mark Goldstein, RN, MSN, EMT-P I/C, clinical nurse specialist at the Emergency Center at Beaumont Hospital in Grosse Pointe, MI.
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A patient who is actively engaged in his or her own care can provide a wealth of information to a busy ED provider who lacks ready access to medical-record information.
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Sumner Regional Medical Center in Gallatin, TN, offers good evidence that quick-turnarounds are indeed possible when you have motivated staff.
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To say our specialty has a full plate is an understatement. We are facing down a number of issues that are guaranteed to transition us to a new world.
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If improved care coordination is integral to bending the health care cost curve, then the interchange between emergency physicians and primary care practitioners (PCPs) is in need of significant improvement, according to a new study on this issue conducted by the Washington, DC-based Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) for the nonprofit National Institute for Health Care Reform (NIHCR).
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For many months, the buzz among health care administrators and policy-makers has been all about accountable care organizations (ACOs), an emerging payment and delivery model that many hope will put an end to the fragmented nature of America's health care system while also bringing down costs.
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In July 2011, Joint Commission (JC) surveyors will begin holding hospitals accountable for some of the elements of performance (EP) contained in new patient-centered communication standards that were first unveiled last summer.
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Drowning is a major global public health problem. In 2000, the World Health Organization reported drowning as the second leading cause of unintentional death worldwide.