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It seems that the legal ED horror stories never end. Just a few months after a Florida family sued over the death of a stroke victim who they say waited too long for a neurosurgeon, a Lake County, IL, coroner's office has ruled an ED death a homicide that was the "result of gross deviations from the standard of care that a reasonable person would have exercised in this situation."
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Every ED manager is concerned about maintaining high-quality standards in their department and recognizes the impact poor quality can have on outcomes and patient satisfaction. However, say the experts, only a small minority recognizes and calculates the impact poor quality can have on their bottom line.
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The following is a hypothetical example to illustrate how to calculate the cost of poor quality (COPQ) and the financial impact of improved quality in the ED. The example was provided by Diana S. Contino, RN, MBA, CEN, FAEN, manager of public services-health care for Costa Mesa, CA-based BearingPoint, which provides consulting, application services, technology solutions, and managed services for health care clients and others.
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A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) reinforces the assertions of a report on the state of emergency medicine by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that crowding in the nation's EDs has reached nearly epidemic proportions.
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The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) has installed a new president and elected a new president-elect during the organization's annual meeting in New Orleans. Brian Keaton, MD, FACEP, of Akron, OH, assumed the presidency, and Linda L. Lawrence, MD, FACEP, of Fairfield, CA, has been elected president-elect.
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Do you have a process in place in your ED to identify patients at risk for suicide? If you don't have one in place by Jan. 1, 2007, you won't be in compliance with a new National Patient Safety Goal that requires hospitals to assess patients at risk for suicide.
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Hospitals are scrambling to develop a policy regarding organ donation after cardiac death (DCD) in order to be in compliance with a revised standard from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations that goes into effect Jan. 1, 2007.
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As IRBs seek to improve efficiency in their own operations, they often suffer from a lack of the most basic data about the costs of reviewing protocols.
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IRBs sometimes reject an investigator's request to use the short informed consent form, even when it would meet regulatory and ethical standards.
