Articles Tagged With:
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Striving for Perfect Registration Accuracy Sends Strong Message
At Greater Baltimore (MD) Medical Center, patient access leaders confidently report that their department operates at a “99% or better” accuracy rate.
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Action Plans Lead to Productivity Increase
Internal benchmarking data allow one patient access department to improve continuously, assisting staff in creating action plans with the greatest impact on outcomes.
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Patient Access Saves $3 Million Targeting Front-end Data Benchmarks
Patient access has always lacked benchmarking data and key performance indicators focused on the front end of the revenue cycle, but this is changing. Departments are using registration metrics to set productivity expectations, identifying how many full-time employees are needed in registration areas, and determining the hourly cost of a registration.
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Overtesting for Medical Clearance Not Only Wasteful, It’s Also Dangerous
Still, many psychiatric facilities won’t accept patients transferred from an ED until extensive testing is complete.
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Study: Constant ED Interruptions Source of Med/Mal Exposure
EPs were interrupted 12.5 times every hour on average, according to a recent study. EPs rejected or delayed interruptions less than 2% of the time.
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Settlement Likely for Missed Diagnosis Case, Even if ED Chart Shows It’s ‘Reasonable’
Defensible cases are settled sometimes because the plaintiff is sympathetic or because the dollar value of damages is high.
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Did EP Override Safety Prompt for No Apparent Reason? It’s a Hurdle for Defense
Emergency physicians routinely override safety prompts in clinical decision support systems for very good reasons. However, a skilled plaintiff attorney can depict it as a rogue physician’s negligence.
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ED Staffing Scrutinized if Patient Experiences Bad Outcome in Waiting Room
Plaintiff attorneys allege inadequate ED staffing contributed to patients’ bad outcomes in medical malpractice cases. Typically, accusers allege the hospital allowed dangerously low staffing levels despite concerns and that triage nurses were inadequately trained.
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The Fourth Amendment: Coming to an ED Near You
ED staff work closely with municipal and state law enforcement officials as well as in-house security workers. That relationship is critical to patient, public, and provider safety. The maintenance of a cordial and functional relationship is imperative. However, it cannot happen at the expense of patients’ health, dignity, and constitutional rights.
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The Vagaries of Reported Penicillin Allergy
The literature says that > 90% of patients who report a history of penicillin allergy can tolerate penicillin. Unstimulated penicillin sensitivity wanes over time: By age 10 years, 80% of allergic subjects are no longer allergic.