-
A new report from the Urgent Matters Learning Network, Bursting at the Seams: Improving Patient Flow to Help Americas Emergency Departments, identifies best practices from 10 hospitals selected as participants in an initiative to help hospitals eliminate ED crowding. Each participating hospital developed and implemented strategies to improve patient flow through the ED and to reduce overcrowding. EDM looks behind the results to the strategies and methods that achieved them. With this issue, we begin a series of articles that will examine just what made these programs special and successful.
-
In a prospective, multicenter study, Cristofanilli and colleagues tested 177 patients with clinically detectable metastatic breast cancer for levels of circulating tumor cells both before and after the initiation of various forms of therapy. The response to therapy was followed using standard clinical detection, but blood samples were also collected to determine the burden of tumor cells in the circulation.
-
It may seem logical to blame your overcrowding problems on understaffing, but as the ED staff at the 302-bed North Shore University Hospital at Forest Hills in Queens, NY, found out, that may not always lead you to the root of your problems. Learning that lesson, and finding the real cause of their problems, enabled them to slash their average cycle time from 187 minutes to 118 minutes.
-
Although safer than traditional colonoscopy, virtual colonoscopys lower sensitivity and efficacy coupled with the increased cost would rule against recommending this procedure at the current time.
-
As the ED staff at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allen-town, PA, have learned, its how you respond to benchmarking data that determines success. For example, to speed up admissions, it was necessary to address virtual capacity issues.
-
A very simple study appeared in the August edition of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. It dealt with the ability of clinicians to precisely determine the position of the fetal head in the maternal pelvis during the second stage of labor.
-
A new planning guide funded by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is designed to help communities make sure they have needed drugs and vaccines in the event of a natural epidemic or bioterrorist attack.
-
Over the last few decades, technology has existed to evaluate the cytotoxic effects of single-agent and combination chemotherapy on cancer cell lines derived from an individual patient's tumor specimens. However, investigators and clinicians have been frustrated as the fruit of this technologya reliable and reproducible assay to help them treat their patients with the agent or agents most likely to benefit themhas yet to be proven.
-
A 73-year-old woman who lives at home with her husband presented at the ED with progressive weakness and difficulty walking. Her chief complaint: My legs just feel weak. After an extensive work-up, including a CAT scan, there were no clear answers, and she was admitted for further evaluation.
-
If several patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) started coming into your ED, would you be prepared to separate them? Could you triage to alternative off-site areas, if needed? As of Jan. 1, 2005, youd better be prepared.
