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A Category 3 tornado hits during a four-county disaster exercise that's been planned for two years. Although that scenario seems improbable, that's exactly what happened to hospitals in the Nashville, TN, area last year. The tornado hit the ground for 20 minutes and caused about 35 injuries and seven fatalities.
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In terms of preparing your staff to handle a disaster, start by developing a good disaster plan, says Louise Kuhny, RN, MPH, MBA, CIC, associate director of standards interpretation at The Joint Commission, previously known as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.
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The Joint Commission has issued an interim action that allows a pharmacist to conduct a retrospective review of medication orders within 48 hours when a pharmacist's prospective review is not performed.
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A July 13, 2006, letter from Thomas E. Hamilton, the director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Survey and Certification Group, about proper handling of EMS ambulance patients has caused a stir in emergency medicine circles that still reverberates today, as confusion remains about exactly what CMS meant.
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The ED management team at Botsford General Hospital in Chesterfield, MO, has adopted and adapted quality improvement principles from The Studer Group, a quality improvement consulting organization in Gulf Breeze, FL, to boost its patient satisfaction rates from the high 80s to the 99th percentile.
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The EDs at three Toronto area hospitals Mount Sinai, Toronto Western, and Toronto General now are able to perform beside ultrasounds using a hand-held device.
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Garnering patient satisfaction scores in the 95th percentile is impressive, but doing it for 10 consecutive years really makes people sit up and take notice.
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The Working Group on Emergency Mass Critical Care has released recommendations to help EDs meet the accreditation standard that requires their facilities to prepare to respond to an influx, or the risk of an influx, of infectious patients.1 The recommendations include the following:
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This is the first in a two-part series on liability risks posed by patients who present to the ED frequently. This month, we'll cover documentation and clinical care of this patient population.
