Leadership
What US Hospitals and Healthcare Providers Should Take Away from the Ebola Outbreak
October 20th, 2014by: Dr. David Klein
Among reams of coverage on the ebola outbreak, Politico just published a characteristic story with the headline, “In the world of ebola, no room for error.” The only problem is that is as soon as you introduce a human element to any system, there will be error. That’s the reality that healthcare leaders across the […]
read articlePosted in Leadership, Life in the ER, Quality Efficiency Utilization
Change at Frederick Memorial Hospital, or, Looking for Brown Ferns
September 17th, 2013by: Dr. Michael Cetta
The last time our emergency medicine group took over management of a new emergency department, at Bristol Hospital in Connecticut, my colleague Noah Keller wrote a post about how we try to instill our unique brand of company culture within the first days and weeks of taking over. Rather than memorizing protocols, we are memorizing people’s names, he […]
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Emergency Physicians Must Embrace Leadership and Management as the Core of their Specialty
July 10th, 2013by: Dr. Anoop Kumar
History’s great achievers—a Napoléon, a da Vinci, a Mozart—have always managed themselves. That, in large measure, is what makes them great achievers. These are the words of Peter F. Drucker, father of modern management theory. They are especially relevant to emergency medicine today. The founders of our specialty and the wave of emergency physicians that […]
read articlePosted in For Residents, Leadership
How to Communicate with Patients in the ER: First Seek to Understand
September 25th, 2012by: Dr. David Klein
A new patient is placed in room 18. I read the chief complaint as I sign up to see the patient: 32-year-old male seeking detox from narcotics. Let’s be honest: most of us in emergency medicine are not thrilled to see this patient. First of all, in most cases, there is not much that we […]
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Should ER Groups Use Locums? Passing the Baton in Connecticut
September 19th, 2012by: Dr. Angelo Falcone
One of the first issues an emergency medicine group must address when they take over a new Emergency Department is whether to employ temporary locums providers to staff the department. The pressure is on to staff up, and many groups use locums as a stop-gap until they have hired full-time emergency physicians. Other groups may […]
read articlePosted in Hospital Partnership, Leadership
When Negotiations Break Down in a Near-Broken Healthcare System
July 17th, 2012by: Dr. Angelo Falcone
As FierceHealthCare reported a few days ago, an emergency physicians group which staffs and manages two Emergency Departments outside Philadelphia has failed to come to an agreement on reimbursement rates with the region’s largest health insurer, Blue Cross. That won’t mean that people insured by Blue Cross will stop coming to the ER, of course. But […]
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5 Strategies To Head Off Malpractice Claims in the ER
March 27th, 2012by: Dr. Jonathan Wenk
I have always had an interest in risk management in the ER, a world in which it is a statistical inevitability that there will be bad outcomes. This interest stems from my fundamental belief that Emergency Physicians are well-intentioned, morally upright individuals. And so it frustrates me when some bad outcomes lead to malpractice litigation. […]
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Leading from the Front in a New Emergency Department
January 31st, 2012by: Dr. David Klein
I recently spent a week working clinically at our new hospital partner, Bristol Hospital, in Connecticut. I worked along many other experienced, seasoned physicians and leaders. In fact, nearly all of our group’s top leadership and senior partners have worked clinical shifts in the Emergency Department there in recent weeks. And “leading from the front,” so to […]
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When an Emergency Room Gets New Management, Relationships Come First
January 20th, 2012by: Dr. Noah Keller
It’s no big surprise that there is anxiety when a new management group takes over an Emergency Department. The question is, what can our group do to effectively confront that anxiety? At midnight on December 31st, 2011, our group took over management of the emergency room at Bristol Hospital. The previous group had managed the ER there […]
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The Importance of Being Clinicians AND Educators
September 13th, 2011by: Dr. David Klein
He had just had a tumor removed from his back and his lung. He was in the hospital bed with a chest tube, an IJ, and a foley. He had been intermittently confused, as expected, and was in no condition to sign the consent. That left his wife, who was about to sign. What else […]
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