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Smaller outpatient facilities struggle to achieve regulatory compliance with HIPAA
An outpatient surgery facility gives a research organization a patient’s protected health information (PHI) for recruitment, but it didn’t have the patient’s authorization or a signed waiver of authorization approved by the Institutional Review Board or privacy board.
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Freestanding EDs and urgent care centers as new sources of surgical referrals
One question I’m frequently asked is how to increase referrals to surgeons in the hospital or freestanding ambulatory surgery center (ASC) arenas.
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Serratia outbreak linked to drug diversion
A former nurse at the University of Wisconsin (UW) Hospital and Clinics in Madison, who allegedly diverted pain medication for personal use, might be linked to a cluster of infections among patients in the units where she worked, UW officials say.
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Nationwide focus is growing on issues surrounding injection safety
There is an increasing focus on safe use of needles and vials, which was the subject of a Sentinel Event Alert from The Joint Commission last year, says Vicki Allen, MSN, RN, CIC, infection prevention coordinator at Beaufort (SC) Memorial Hospital.1
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Trail of tears: Fired drug-diverting workers free to find another healthcare facility
A nurse stealing morphine by replacing it with saline in a medication vial might not have realized she was colonized with Serratia marcescens, a gram negative bacteria that would soon find its way into the bloodstreams of a cluster of patients administered the contaminated solution. The insult of denied pain treatment was followed by the injury of infection, which proved fatal in one patient. That scenario is under investigation at a Wisconsin hospital, the latest in a series of outbreaks linked to drug-diverting healthcare workers. (See second story that follows.)
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Adverse Events Can Happen When Staff Try to Maintain Equipment
The incident started with good intentions.
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Study: Bacterium associated with rare “forgotten” disease also responsible for more sore throats than Group A strep in young adults
A new study suggests that Fusobacterium necrophorum, the bacterium associated with a “forgotten disease,” is, in fact, the cause of more sore throats than the more commonly considered Group A strep bacterium among the college-aged population. Researchers, led by Robert Centor, MD, a professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and a noted authority on sore throats, strongly urge frontline providers, such as those who serve in EDs across the country, to consider F. necrophorum when evaluating young adults with pharyngitis, and to treat accordingly.1
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New center offers a unique venue for research, training
While the Massey Emergency Critical Care Center (EC3) at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) in Ann Arbor has only just opened its doors, planning for the unit has been a multi-year, multidisciplinary effort, explains Jennifer Gegenheimer-Holmes, RN, BSN, MHSA, CEN, the director of operations for the Department of Emergency Medicine at UMHS. “We created an emergency critical care advisory group [which includes] the medical directors of the adult ICUs here, respiratory therapy, and our physician leads within the ED,” she says.
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New type of center focuses on caring for the most critically ill patients, decompressing ED that serves patients at the upper end of the acuity spectrum
Much of the discussion surrounding emergency medicine seems to focus on how to keep lower-acuity patients out of the ED, or at least how to move them through to discharge faster. While it is true that many EDs see a high percentage of low-acuity or fast-track patients, there are also EDs that are overwhelmed with patients at the other end of the acuity spectrum. The University of Michigan Health System’s (UMHS) adult ED in Ann Arbor is a case in point.
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The role of emergency medicine in curbing, preventing measles outbreaks
It’s hard to discuss the current measles outbreaks without pointing out what experts see as the primary reason for the recurrence of a disease that had been largely vanquished, at least in this country.