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In February 2008, 12% of the patients who presented to the emergency department at Gaston Memorial Hospital in Gastonia, NC, left without being treated. By the end of January 2009, that figure had dropped to 1.3%.
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While the Kaizen methodology, developed by Toyota, involves examining processes in minute detail, it ironically can lead to rapid improvement in ED processes, says Sonya Carver, RN, clinical manager/days for the ED at Gaston Memorial Hospital in Gastonia, NC.
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No emergency department cuts its average door-to-doc time from 93 minutes to 20 minutes by accident. The success story at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center in Houston was the result of discovering a patient flow model at another facility that was superior to theirs, and then continuing to search out additional models to come up with their own system that best addressed their specific needs.
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Winning a malpractice case takes more than success in the courtroom: It also requires ongoing best practices on the part of the ED manager to educate and prepare the staff for possible lawsuits.
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A recent federal appeals court decision clarifies how far an investigation into "disruptive behavior" goes under the Health Care Quality Improvement Act.
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Once thought of as shocking outliers, the continuing hepatitis outbreaks in ambulatory care settings and clinics increasingly suggest that for every cluster detected, many more infections acquired in health care are being missed due to inadequate surveillance systems and lack of public health resources to investigate individual cases.
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In light of continuing outbreaks of hepatitis in ambulatory and long-term care, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering recommending hepatitis B virus vaccination for diabetic residents of nursing homes.
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The recently reported rapid deaths of two patients infected with a new highly toxic staph strain suggests the deadly pathogen is emerging in the community and certainly will pose a threat to hospitals, a researcher tells Hospital Infection Control & Prevention.
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The Joint Commission and other national infection prevention groups made a point to include catheter-related urinary tract infections (CA-UTIs) traditionally considered a relatively benign adverse event in a recently issued compendium targeting the major health care-associated infections (HAIs).