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Never assume that all sex offenders are the same, cautions Michael Fogel, PsyD, a forensic psychologist at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Doing so will lead you to either overreact to some patients who pose little harm or underreact to those who truly pose a risk to others.
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Authority figures in health care have the potential to influence whether deviation is normalized, notes John Banja, PhD, assistant director for health sciences and clinical ethics at Emory University in Atlanta.
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More hospitals are adopting the use of color-coded wristbands for patients in an effort to improve safety by alerting anyone nearby that the person is a fall risk, for instance, or to provide quick recognition that the patient has a penicillin allergy or even a do-not-resuscitate order. But now there are growing concerns that the wristbands can violate the patient's confidentiality by displaying private information to anyone who sees the wristband.
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The newly launched Health Care Notification Network (HCNN) has delivered the first online drug alerts to U.S. physicians.
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News: A man was admitted to the hospital complaining of anxiety and being under tremendous pressure at work. The man was seen by an internist and a neurologist, and antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications were administered. After a few days, the man's condition improved, and the results of a brain MRI came back normal. The next morning, the man asked his nurse for a razor so that he could shave. Three hours later, he was found dead, locked in the bathroom, having committed suicide with the razor.
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With today's shrinking health care dollars and pressure from payers to move patients through the continuum faster than ever, hospitals need to focus on improving patient flow. That's where case managers come in.
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It will take well-organized data to show your hospital administration how case managers can affect patient flow and to justify additional staff to focus on the effort, says Toni Cesta, RN, PhD, FAAN, vice president, patient flow optimization for the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System and health care consultant and partner in Case Management Concepts LLC.
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When patients are admitted to Alamance Regional Medical Center in Burlington, NC, care managers are responsible for assigning the DRG and length of stay and establishing medical necessity and the correct patient status.
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Payer denials for inappropriate observation patient status dropped by 50% the first year after Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton, OH, instituted a case management protocol that delegates responsibility for determining patient status to case managers.
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Before developing a protocol that delegates authority for determining patient status to case managers, a multidisciplinary team at Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton, OH, spent several months researching the process, seeking advice from the Florida Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) and hospitals in Florida that had piloted a case management admission status protocol.
