Tag: emergency-room
Addiction and Pain: Who Gets a Script?
February 27th, 2012by: Dr. Julian Orenstein
As if we as ER docs didn’t have enough on our plates already with proliferating drug shortages, adapting to the Affordable Care Act, the capriciousness of a new and very temperamental EMR, and my teenage daughter’s mood swings (wait, how did that get in there?), we also find ourselves under the microscope for our treatment […]
read articlePosted in Quality Efficiency Utilization
We Want Our Healthcare Like We Want our Fast Food
February 24th, 2012by: Dr. Angelo Falcone
With due respect to those patient souls among us, America is, in general, an impatient nation. That includes how we think about our healthcare. This is why I read with some interest, and some amusement, stories like “A real ‘doc fix,’” published this week in the New York Times. Basically it says we need to […]
read articlePosted in Quality Efficiency Utilization
Maryland’s Health Information Exchange Helps Take the Blinders off Emergency Care
February 21st, 2012by: Dr. Angelo Falcone
The headline on a Washington Post story last week was enough to give almost any healthcare consumer a moment’s pause: “Maryland Hospitals to Share Patient Data.” To which a patient might respond, “Wait, You Mean Hospitals Don’t Share Data Now?” We see it in the Emergency Department all the time. Patients come in who have […]
read articlePosted in Future of Healthcare
Sometimes the Best Emergency Medicine is No Medicine at All
February 3rd, 2012by: Dr. Angelo Falcone
I was recently reminded by a patient experience that the best medicine sometimes is no medicine at all. I cared for a young woman who had been seen the last few nights complaining of shortness of breath. When it was obvious that she had normal breath sounds, no wheezing and normal oxygen level I started […]
read articlePosted in Quality Efficiency Utilization
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 […]
read articlePosted in Hospital Partnership, Leadership, Life in the ER
Twenty Years of Change and the “View from the Box”
December 23rd, 2011by: Dr. Julian Orenstein
Once, a really long time ago, before blogs if you can conceive of such a time, I embarked on a part-time writing career. My subject matter was the parade of frailty, the courage and the just plain bizarre that were to be found daily – hourly – in the ER. My first collection of essays […]
read articlePosted in Life in the ER
Does Emergency Medicine Really Matter?
November 15th, 2011by: Dr. Angelo Falcone
I’m always curious when people ask what I do and I say I work in an ER: what exactly do they imagine I do there? They may picture us treating sniffles, ankle sprains, and the uninsured. At least, that’s what some in media and politics would have them imagine. You want to know what I […]
read articlePosted in Future of Healthcare, Life in the ER
The Expanding Role and Bright Future of Advanced Practice Practitioners in the Emergency Department
October 26th, 2011by: Dr. Mike Perraut
Advanced Practice Practitioners see a wide variety of patients at our hospital sites, from those with chest pain to those with minor lacerations and everything in between. This practice is not limited to us. Nationally, it is estimated that Physician Assistants (PA’s) see 10 percent of emergency room patients in the United States, and a 2009 […]
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Child, Scalp, Laceration, Vacation – When the Patient is Your Son
August 17th, 2011by: Dr. Angelo Falcone
If there were four words I was hoping to combine on our family vacation this past week, it is safe to assume they would not be the four listed above. My 19 month-old son, Chance (aptly named), decided to take a header off a kitchen chair and struck the back of his head while we […]
read articlePosted in Life in the ER
New Observation Unit at WMHS Meets Growing Trend
July 22nd, 2011by: Dr. Rob Flint
We are proud to announce the opening of a new observation medicine unit at Western Maryland Health System (WMHS) in Cumberland, MD. We believe observation medicine will be a growing specialty as health care reform changes the way health care is delivered in the United States. The concept is to allow a focused, intense evaluation of certain patients […]
read articlePosted in Observation Care