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Misplaced NG tubes a major patient safety risk

Misplaced nasogastric and percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tubes pose a serious threat to patient safety and a liability risk for hospitals. New technology might improve the detection of misplaced tubes.

Failure to diagnose infection causes toddler death and yields verdict of $1.72 million

Plaintiffs’ 3-month-old daughter was taken to the hospital with a high fever and elevated pulse rate. The ED physician diagnosed an ear infection and discharged the infant with a prescription for antibiotics. Days later she was diagnosed with pneumococcal meningitis, hypoxic brain injury, and hydrocephalus. She lived for 20 more months. Plaintiffs sued the hospital and the ED physician, and they won a verdict of joint and several liability for $1.7 million.

Urinary Tract Infection

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are common in the emergency department. In fact, UTIs were the most common bacterial infection encountered in ambulatory settings in 2007 and the most common primary diagnosis for women visiting the emergency department.

State Medical Board Complaint Can Fuel ED Med/Mal Suit, and Vice Versa: Don’t “Go It Alone”

It’s difficult to imagine most emergency physicians (EPs) choosing to defend themselves in a malpractice lawsuit. However, many respond to state medical board investigations without legal representation. “Many medical board complaints end up being more serious than medical malpractice lawsuits,” says Ellen M. Voss, JD, a medical malpractice defense attorney at Williams Kastner in Portland, OR.

EPs Seeing Many More Incidental Findings: Take Steps to Reduce Liability

Failure to notify patients and their primary care providers of incidental radiology findings “definitely poses significant medicolegal liability for the emergency physician (EP),” according to Sayon Dutta, MD, an attending physician in the emergency department (ED) at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

Will EPs Be Dismissed — or Get ‘Stuck’ in the Claim? These Are Determining Factors

Understandably, emergency physicians (EPs) who believe that allegations of malpractice are unfounded don’t want to suffer through litigation one minute longer than necessary. However, getting “out” of a claim, regardless of the merits of the case against the EP, is often no easy task.

Peer Review: How Protected Are You?

While it has definite advantages, peer review presents unique and significant challenges, particularly for the individual provider.

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

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.

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.