Emergency
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Whole-Hospital Approach Accelerates Patient Flow in ED, Slashes Wait Times and Walk-Outs
To prevent people from leaving an ED without seeing a provider, researchers identified bottlenecks, secured support from leadership, and engaged with all units that conduct business with the department to address throughput problems. Coordination and accountability helped solve flow issues at the source.
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Virtual Nurses Alleviate Burdens on Frontline Staff, Critical Workforce Shortages
Across the United States, health systems are experimenting with programs that enable nurses, working remotely, to handle tasks that usually are handled by in-person, bedside nurses. These virtual nurses are managing everything from purposeful rounding to handling administrative tasks that often keep bedside nurses from spending more time on patient care.
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Patients with Limited English Proficiency Pose Risks
It is critical for administrators to provide professional interpreter services for all languages commonly spoken among patient populations that present to emergency departments most often.
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Quality Improvement Project Aims to Decelerate Aggressive Hypertension Treatment
Although there might be good intentions behind administering intravenous antihypertensive medication, staff should remain mindful of possible consequences.
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Early Missed Sepsis Diagnosis Leads to $2 Million Award for Patient
This case highlights the importance of screening patients properly and the compounding risks for nurses, physicians, and hospitals that can result when staff miss a screening.
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When ED Is Packed, Keep Patients Moving with Triage Hallway, Dedicated Staff
Since Pull to Infinity was implemented in June 2022, the average time it takes to see a provider in the ED has dropped from 22 minutes to seven minutes. This, despite continually expanding volumes. The average patient arrival-to-discharge time has improved to 175 minutes, down seven minutes. Also, the leave-without-being-seen rate declined from 3.5% last year to 1.6% in the first four months of 2023.
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Patient Progression Hub Optimizes Throughput, Centralizes Decision-Making
Children’s Mercy in Kansas City aims to leverage an impressive array of artificial intelligence-driven tools, predictive analytics, and other feats of engineering to hone patient flow to new heights of efficiency.
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Tackling Bias in Healthcare Requires Awareness, Data-Gathering, and High-Level Commitment
Healthcare systems have collectively turned their attention to promoting equity and rooting out bias. The results of a recently published study of how emergency nurses experience and react to bias suggests much work remains. Further, the authors maintained significant change is likely to require a firm commitment from the upper ranks of institutions to ensure equity is not just a slogan.
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Emergency Nurse Criminally Charged for Diverting Pain Medications
There are specific malpractice risks for EDs in this situation. Risks for patients include inadequate pain relief and infectious disease transmission. There also are patient safety issues related to receiving care from an impaired provider. For leaders, there are processes to put in place that can help them identify patterns or trends indicating potential diversion.
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Some ED Malpractice Lawsuits Hinge on Security Camera Footage
Security footage of ED waiting rooms is relevant to claims alleging delayed triage, failure to re-assess the patient during a long wait, or failure to intervene if a patient deteriorated in the waiting room. However, many claims involve allegations of delayed treatment or diagnosis. What happened in the waiting room, before the patient was brought back for evaluation, could have contributed to a poor outcome.