-
While assessing a 40-year-old male who complained of abdominal pain, nurses did a routine mental health screening, which included asking if he was currently suicidal. "He answered 'yes' to all of the questions," says MaryEllen Swanson, RN, a senior staff nurse in the ED at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. "It would have been missed if the screening had not been done."
-
If a tuberculosis patient just left your ED to go to a negative pressure room, housekeeping must come and disinfect the room wearing full contact precautions garb, leave the room unused for four hours, and remove all hanging curtains and replace these with clean ones.
-
-
Every part of the process in stroke care from the time the patient begins to have symptoms to the time treatment is initiated is constantly examined for ways to cut minutes, reports Sharon Pulver, MSN, RN, CEN, network stroke coordinator for the SSM Neurosciences Institute in St. Louis, MO.
-
Children are more susceptible to acute airway compromise due to the unique characteristics of a child's airway, according to Eileen Callahan, RN, BSN, an ED pediatric nurse educator at Tufts Medical Center and the Floating Hospital for Children in Boston, MA.
-
If the patient standing in front of you appears jittery, unable to sit still, and is continually scratching at sores on his or her face and body, it's likely he or she is using methamphetamine. "It's unfortunate to say, but we can usually tell by looking at someone that he or she is a meth user," says Sue Williams, RN, a nurse with SSM Behavioral Health Services at St. Joseph Health Center-Wentzville in Wentzville, MO.
-
If you're not paying as much attention to documentation and medical necessity for Medicaid patients as you do for those covered by Medicare, your hospital is likely to suffer when the Medicaid Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program starts on Jan. 1, 2012.
-
(Editor's note: This is a multi-part series where we will explore the most common roles, functions, models, and caseloads in the hospital case management field.)
-
Key components of the initiatives include forging an alliance with post-acute providers, transition coaching for at-risk patients during the hospital stay and after discharge, and teaching patients to use their personal health record to track their care and list questions for providers, according to Tammy Cole-Poklewski, RN, MS, director of quality, patient safety, and care management at the 142-bed facility.
-
After Charleston (WV) Area Medical Center began a readmission reduction program, readmission rates for a group of targeted heart failure patients was reduced by 50%.
