Annals of emergency medicine
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Review Meta Analysis
The Impact of Clinical Decision Rules on Computed Tomography Use and Yield for Pulmonary Embolism: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
Validation studies have confirmed the accuracy of clinical decision rules for the evaluation of pretest probability of pulmonary embolism. It has been assumed that clinical decision rules will also decrease testing in actual practice, but the evidence for this is unclear. We perform a systematic review of impact analyses on clinical decision rules for pulmonary embolism. ⋯ Among participants with suspected pulmonary embolism, implementation of the Wells criteria was associated with a modest increase in CT angiography yield. There is a lack of cluster-randomized trials to confirm the efficacy of clinical decision rules for the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.
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Multicenter Study
From Context Comes Expertise: How Do Expert Emergency Physicians Use Their Know-How to Make Decisions?
Decisionmaking is influenced by the environment in which it takes place. The objective of our study was to explore the influence of the specific features of the emergency department (ED) environment on decisionmaking. In this paper, we specifically report on the way emergency physicians use their knowledge of their collaborators to make their decisions. ⋯ Emergency physicians interact with many other health care workers during the different stages of the patient's management. The many ways in which experts use their knowledge of other health care professionals to make decisions puts traditional conceptions of expert knowledge into perspective and opens avenues for future research.
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Value in emergency medicine is determined by both patient-important outcomes and the costs associated with achieving them. However, measuring true costs is challenging. Without an understanding of costs, emergency department (ED) leaders will be unable to determine which interventions might improve value for their patients. ⋯ This article reviews current costing mechanisms in the ED and their pitfalls. It then describes how time-driven activity-based costing may be superior to these current costing systems. Time-driven activity-based costing, in addition to being a more accurate costing system, can be used for process improvements in the ED.
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Prescription drug monitoring programs are generally underused in emergency departments (ED) and nationwide enrollment is low among emergency physicians. We aimed to develop consensus recommendations for prescription drug monitoring program policy and design to optimize their functionality and use in the ED. We assembled a technical expert panel with key stakeholders in emergency medicine, public health, and public policy. ⋯ The process yielded policy recommendations and design features, with majority agreement. The panel made 18 policy recommendations within these main themes: enrollment should be mandatory, with an automatic process to mitigate the workload; registration should be open to all prescribers; delegates should have access to prescription drug monitoring program to alleviate work flow burdens; prescription drug monitoring program data should be pushed into hospital electronic health records; prescription drug monitoring program review should be mandatory for patients receiving opioid prescriptions and based on objective criteria; the prescription drug monitoring program content should be standardized and updated in a timely manner; and states should encourage interstate data sharing. An expert panel identified 18 recommendations that can be used by states and policymakers to improve prescription drug monitoring program design to increase use in the ED setting.