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A new study from the Dartmouth Atlas Project seems to indicate the "report card" for Medicare patients at the end of their lives is a mixed bag of pluses and minuses.
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Medicare spending on hospice care for nursing facility residents has grown nearly 70% since 2005. Additionally, hundreds of hospices had a high percentage of their patients residing in nursing facilities, and most of these hospices were for-profit.
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This is the second of a two-part series that looks at communicating with patients who have difficulty communicating. Last month, we looked at innovative and proven strategies to communicate with patients who have dementia. This month, tips and strategies for communicating with pediatric patients, and their families, are offered.
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Hospices serving people with Medicare will see a 2.5% increase in their Medicare payments for fiscal year (FY) 2012, according to a final regulation released July 29, 2011, by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Hospices also are called upon to begin reporting on the quality of care received by Medicare patients as a result of this final regulation.
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If your ED patient is sedated, he or she may have an adverse reaction to medications used in the procedure, an allergic reaction, or become hypoxic from inadequate respiratory effort, warns Brad Guffin, BSN, RN-BC, CPEN, director of emergency services at Martin Memorial Medical Center in Stuart, FL.
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While observing an elderly woman rubbing her arm as though it was a muscle ache, which she said was from gardening work, the possibility of a heart attack didn't cross the mind of the ED nurse caring for the patient.
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If your ED patient is taking multiple medications, he or she may have no idea what they are for. "They may tell us they are taking them because they were prescribed, without knowing what the purpose is or if the dosage changed recently," says Jocelyn Cajanap, RN, ED educator at Glendale (CA) Adventist Medical Center.
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When an ED physician at Scripps Mercy San Diego (CA) decided to order lorazepam to help an elderly man sleep, the ED nurse caring for the patient got a very unexpected reaction.
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If your patient has aspirated prior to being intubated, he or she is at increased risk for ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), warns Nicole Schiever, RN, MSN, ED team leader at Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee, IL.
