The EMrecruits Weekly | March 31, 2015

Top Emergency Medicine News and Updates

Explore the top stories in emergency medicine news via our weekly newsletter below. Don't forget to visit our career site as well for a complete listing of our available emergency medicine careers.  

Most Patients Don't Visit Nearest ER
from Fierce Healthcare

Fewer than half of emergency department (ED) visits are to the patient's local emergency room, according to a new data brief from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)...

ACEP Leaders Visit Washington, D.C., to Support Health Care Safety Net Enhancement Act
from ACEP Now

Medical liability reform for physicians who practice in emergency departments is essential to improving the delivery of patient care, saving costs, and protecting patients in a medical emergency, said Alex M. Rosenau, DO, CPE, FACEP, immediate Past President of ACEP. He was joined today by Representative Charlie Dent (R-PA), who introduced legislation—the Health Care Safety Net Enhancement Act of 2015—to improve emergency care for patients...

The Three "Hows" of Physician Compensation
from Lexology 

New care delivery models and healthcare reimbursement trends are heating up the market for hospital employment of physicians yet again, but does a productivity-based compensation model still work in this environment? 

The EMrecruits Weekly | March 17, 2015

Top Emergency Medicine News and Updates

Explore the top stories in emergency medicine news via our weekly newsletter below. Don't forget to visit our career site as well for a complete listing of our available emergency medicine careers.  

The Worried Welcome
from EP Monthly

As I walked into the room and gave a tired smile and introduction, I saw the mother of the small baby girl start to relax. “Yes, I believe you are right. She probably has croup,” I said after listening to the mother’s history while watching, then listening to the child breathe...

Emerging Healthcare Trends Highlight Need to Define Quality, Value Metrics for Emergency Medicine
from ACEP Now

Where does emergency medicine fit into this emerging framework? Does it fit at all—does it even have to fit, or can it remain effectively outside and immune from this new world order of health care? How do we add value as the transformation occurs? 

ACEP - Minus the Neurologists - Tempers its tPA Policy
from Emergency Medicine News

A draft of a new clinical policy from the American College of Emergency Physicians takes a much more conservative approach on using intravenous tPA for managing acute ischemic stroke in the emergency department than the current guidelines, which were approved in 2012...

The EMrecruits Weekly | March 17, 2015

Top Emergency Medicine News and Updates

Explore the top stories in emergency medicine news via our weekly newsletter below. Don't forget to visit our career site as well for a complete listing of our available emergency medicine careers.  

Competency Measurement Approach for Advanced Practice Providers
from ACEP Now

Lately, the topic of competency of advanced practice providers (APPs), also known as physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs), has come up frequently within hospitals and large health care organizations. These groups have been hiring more new APP graduates and want to know how long it will take for them to get up to speed within the institution...

Bill Would Factor Demographics into Readmission Penalties
from Fierce Healthcare

Bipartisan legislation introduced in the House and Senate would incorporate sociodemographic data when calculating hospital readmission rates, which the American Hospital Association (AHA) said would improve the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program... 

Non-Opioid Pain Medications to Consider for Emergency Department Patients
from ACEP Now

As recently as 15 years ago, the approach to pain management was a symptomatic one, whereby the symptom of pain was hidden or minimized with a general analgesic such as an opioid or acetaminophen. Additional pain relief was sought by treating the underlying disease under the assumption that the pain would resolve if you did so...

The EMrecruits Weekly | February 10, 2015

Top Emergency Medicine News and Updates

Explore the top stories in emergency medicine news via our weekly newsletter below. Don't forget to visit our career site as well for a complete listing of our available emergency medicine careers.  

Emergency Department Evaluation of Blunt Orbital Trauma
from EM Resident

More than 2.5 million eye injuries occur each year. According to information gleaned from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), there were 636,619 emergency department visits related to eye injuries in 2008, representing an average of 1,744 ED visits daily. Blunt orbital trauma is a significant cause of ocular morbidity and among the common preventable causes of monocular blindness in developed countries...

Frostbite: How to Classify and Treat It
from EP Monthly

Frostbite is a freezing injury of peripheral tissues. It is characterized by extracellular crystal formation and micro-vascular thrombi that lead to localized cell death and inflammation, placing the digits or limbs involved at risk for amputation... 

How Interprovider Communication in the ED Affects More than What You Think
from EM Resident

Medicine is full of communication. We must communicate effectively with our patients and with other professionals on the care team. Duty-hour limits have also increased the number of shift-to-shift handoffs among residents and trainees, making communication even more critical...

Volume Trends for Urgent Cares and Freestanding EDs

During my IT update presentation at the 2014 PSR Leadership Conference, the following illustration was shown to depict emergency department visits nationally by year (blue line) and urgent care visits nationally by year (red line).

This gives you a quick idea of just how quickly urgent cares have overtaken emergency departments in terms of total volumes seen. This is sucking away a lot of the lower acuity, higher-profit margin patients that emergency departments have seen in the past.