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If you fail to confirm that neurological deficits are a normal baseline for your elder patient, this may be a dangerous assumption. To avoid this mistake, ask others about the patient's baseline, advises Nadya Valdovinos, RN, TNCC, an ED nurse at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, and read past medical notes and transfer records.
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Weather forecasters had much of the Southeast on high alert for dangerous storms on Wednesday, April 27, but the clinical and administrative staff at Cullman Regional Medical Center (CRMC) in Cullman, AL, got a particularly vivid view of what these storms were capable of at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
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In 2008, there was plenty of evidence that things weren't working very well in the ED at St. Vincent's Medical Center in Bridgeport, CT. The leave-without-being-seen (LWBS) rate was at 5%, the average wait time to see a physician was over two hours, patient satisfaction was in the single digits, and the hospital recorded eight serious safety events in that one year alone.
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With Medicare's new value-based purchasing (VBP) program set to begin impacting payments to most acute-care hospitals in October 2012, providers have been put on notice that the fee-for-service payment methodology is being gradually replaced by payment formulas that reward quality.
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Knee dislocations have the potential to result in significant morbidity and mortality if not correctly diagnosed and optimally managed. Early identification and treatment of neurovascular injury and compartment syndrome may avert disaster for the patient.
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Emergency physicians (EPs) are often faced with caring for the impending or actual cardiac arrest patient.
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Simply hearing the words, "I am going to sue you ... can send shock waves up your spine," says Michelle Myers Glower, RN, MSN, LNC a health care consultant based in Grand Rapids, MI.
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It is not uncommon for a patient or family member who is unhappy with the services he or she receives in the ED to make threatening statements about filing lawsuits, says Justin S. Greenfelder, JD, a health care attorney with Buckingham, Doolittle & Burroughs in Canton, OH.
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Errors related to missed or delayed diagnoses are a frequent cause of patient injury and, as such, are an underlying cause of patient-safety-related events, according to new research from the Harrisburg-based Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority,1 which reviewed 100 events related to diagnostic errors between June 2004 and November 2009, 23 of which originated in the ED.
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To have a successful lawsuit in cases of missed or delayed diagnosis, a plaintiff needs at least two things, according to Michael Blaivas, MD, professor of emergency medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Northside Hospital Forsyth in Cumming, GA.
