ED Management 2004-11-01

Number of geriatric patients grows: You must prepare for distinct challenges

A 73-year-old woman who lives at home with her husband presented at the ED with progressive weakness and difficulty walking. Her chief complaint: My legs just feel weak. After an extensive work-up, including a CAT scan, there were no clear answers, and she was admitted for further evaluation.

Are geriatric EDs the wave of the future?

Eventually, hospitals will develop geriatric EDs, just as many now have pediatric EDs, predicts Lowell Gerson, PhD, professor of epidemiology at Northeastern Ohio University College of Medicine in Rootstown.

Rapid-cycle testing cuts bed turnaround by 85%

A new report from the Urgent Matters Learning Network, Bursting at the Seams: Improving Patient Flow to Help Americas Emergency Departments, identifies best practices from 10 hospitals selected as participants in an initiative to help hospitals eliminate ED crowding. Each participating hospital developed and implemented strategies to improve patient flow through the ED and to reduce overcrowding. EDM looks behind the results to the strategies and methods that achieved them. With this issue, we begin a series of articles that will examine just what made these programs special and successful.

Care management unit has broad LOS impact

A new report from the Urgent Matters Learning Network titled Bursting at the Seams: Improving Patient Flow to Help Americas Emergency Departments, describes the experiences of 10 hospitals selected for an initiative to help hospitals eliminate ED overcrowding. Of the 10, four received a special $250,000 grant for demonstrator projects.

Focus on process slashes average cycle time by 37%

It may seem logical to blame your overcrowding problems on understaffing, but as the ED staff at the 302-bed North Shore University Hospital at Forest Hills in Queens, NY, found out, that may not always lead you to the root of your problems. Learning that lesson, and finding the real cause of their problems, enabled them to slash their average cycle time from 187 minutes to 118 minutes.

To speed up admissions, address ‘virtual capacity’

As the ED staff at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allen-town, PA, have learned, its how you respond to benchmarking data that determines success. For example, to speed up admissions, it was necessary to address virtual capacity issues.

AHRQ guide helps with vaccine, drug dispensing

A new planning guide funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is designed to help communities make sure they have needed drugs and vaccines in the event of a natural epidemic or bioterrorist attack.

Preparing your facility for a natural disaster

ED Accreditation Update: Are you ready for an influx of SARS patients?

If several patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) started coming into your ED, would you be prepared to separate them? Could you triage to alternative off-site areas, if needed? As of Jan. 1, 2005, youd better be prepared.

Corrections

ED Accreditation Update: New Infection Control Standard

The health care organization is an important resource for the continued functioning of a community. An organizations ability to deliver care, treatment, or services is threatened when it is ill-prepared to respond to an epidemic or infections likely to require expanded or extended care capabilities over a prolonged period.

ED Accreditation Update: Ensure compliance with environment of care

As EDs have grown and become overcrowded, environment of care issues also have grown, particularly security concerns, says Dean Samet, associate director/senior engineer of accreditation operations/Standards Interpretation Group at the Joint Commission.

ED Accreditation Update: JCAHO and CMS align performance measures

The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have been working to align their common national hospital performance in the areas of acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia, and surgical infection prevention.

2004 Salary Survey Results: Incentives are a growing trend in emergency department pay, link seen to pay for performance

Physicians and nurse managers in emergency medicine stand a better change of boosting their income through incentive packages, as opposed to straight salary increases, according to industry observers. And if you did receive a significant salary boost in the past year, chances are youre an ED nurse manager not a physician manager.

ED Management – November 1, 2004

November 1, 2004