[8 MIN READ]
I recently reviewed the bare-bones of what EMTALA is and highlighted recent studies of EMTALA investigations.
In this installment, I have summarized nine recently settled EMTALA cases in which monetary penalties were levied by OIG against the hospital that serve to illustrate the factors responsible for alleged violations.
[5 MIN READ]
EMTALA violations can be a costly lesson for both healthcare providers and organizations. EMTALA is an acronym for the “Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.” This statute was enacted in 1986 for the original purpose of preventing dumping – the practice of refusing service to patients in the emergency department for financial reasons. The final EMTALA statute now extends beyond this initial noble goal and prohibits discrimination against ED patients for any reason.
[6 MIN READ]
After reading the case with perspective on how to recognize secondary postpartum hemorrhage, it's critical to understand why it occurs and how to treat it.
Why does secondary PPH occur? The normal physiologic changes associated with pregnancy are the perfect predisposition for an unrecognized hemorrhage. Typically, pregnant women are young and healthy with increases in circulating blood volume and hormonal and vascular changes specific to pregnancy. All of this creates the perfect environment for hemorrhage.
[4 MIN READ]
Your postpartum patient was not complaining. Her vital signs were stable. She had experienced a prolonged labor, but to your knowledge, her vaginal delivery the previous day went well. Her recovery seemed to be progressing nicely. The morning report did not reveal that she was at any risk.
[2 MIN READ]
The development of tools and resources to guide the busy practitioner in prescription decision-making is a welcome trend in healthcare, particularly when the information is instantly available from valuable sources, including Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs and the patient’s medication history. As outlined recently by Ms. Caldwell on the MEDHOST blog, marrying these resources into the prescription functionality of an EHR is a key component in the effort to combat the opioid crisis.
We've featured a variety of topics, cases, and missed diagnoses on our blog this year, and we hope that you've found the content useful and relevant.
In case you missed some of 2018's most popular posts, here are the top 10 articles from the blog this year, according to our website visitor statistics. Which article is most valuable to you?
[2 MIN READ]
When you serve clinicians with varying experience levels, how do you implement your triage training courses to create an ideal experience for each group?
While your implementation plan and structure might vary based on the size of your facility, our experienced triage educators outline these best practices to streamline your program and ensure that expectations are clear.
[3 MIN READ]
Over the past few blogs, I have written about the interaction of the physician and the patient. I have also discussed that physician satisfaction is the force that drives the practice of medicine. I am hoping that I have made a strong case for the topic today. But what is exactly the “missed obvious?”
There has been a tremendous push toward patient satisfaction.
So great was the push that payment structures, financial assistance, and government evaluations of hospitals and physicians were based on it. What is astonishing is that studies show patients to be more interested in how the physician interacted with them than how he or she treated them.
[3 MIN READ]
The risks we face as acute care practitioners are not static—they evolve over time. Just as we master the approach to a longstanding high-risk problem, a new risky patient presentation rears its head to challenge us. Consider ectopic pregnancy. Now that we routinely obtain pregnancy tests on all women from age 10 to 60 and have access to or skills in ultrasound, the evaluation of possible ectopic pregnancy has become largely an algorithmically routine matter, and errors involving ectopic pregnancy have plummeted as a result.
[3 MIN READ]
Correct patient identification has long been at the top of the list regarding safety.
A recent TSG article by Dr. Tom Syzek entitled “Medical Errors, Communication, Teamwork and End of Life: Lessons from Angola” speaks to the importance of correct patient identification and the safety implications surrounding it. This article dovetails nicely with the new 2019 Joint Commission National Patient Safety Goal (NPSG) regarding newborn identification, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to keep the conversation relevant and on-topic by addressing this new NPSG.
