Annals of emergency medicine
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Letter Case Reports
Overdose of etizolam: the abuse and rise of a benzodiazepine analog.
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Performance measures are increasingly important to guide meaningful quality improvement efforts and value-based reimbursement. Populations included in most current hospital performance measures are defined by recorded diagnoses using International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision codes in administrative claims data. ⋯ In this article, we propose chief complaint-based quality measures as a means to enhance the evaluation of quality and value in emergency care. We discuss the potential benefits of chief complaint-based measures, describe opportunities to mitigate challenges, propose an example measure set, and present several recommendations to advance this paradigm in ED-based performance measurement.
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Observational Study
Forecasting Emergency Department Visits Using Internet Data.
Using Internet data to forecast emergency department (ED) visits might enable a model that reflects behavioral trends and thereby be a valid tool for health care providers with which to allocate resources and prevent crowding. The aim of this study is to investigate whether Web site visits to a regional medical Web site, the Stockholm Health Care Guide, a proxy for the general public's concern of their health, could be used to predict the ED attendance for the coming day. ⋯ Web site visits may be used in this fashion to predict attendance to the ED. The model works both for the entire region and for individual hospitals. The possibility of using Internet data to predict ED visits is promising.
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We describe characteristics of patients with in-emergency department (ED) opioid-related adverse drug events, medication errors, and harm resulting from medication errors; identify patient-, provider-, and system-based factors associated with in-ED opioid-related medication errors and harm; and create a list of strategies to prevent future events. ⋯ We identified patient-, provider-, and systems-based factors related to opioid-related adverse drug events and medication errors among ED patients who had received naloxone. The results from our assessment can be used to inform educational and policy initiatives aimed to prevent in-ED opioid-related adverse drug events and medication errors.