Annals of emergency medicine
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Interhospital transfers are costly to patients and to the health care system. The use of telemedicine may enable more efficient systems by decreasing transfers or diverting transfers from crowded referral emergency departments (EDs) to alternative appropriate facilities. Our primary objective is to describe the prevalence of telemedicine for transfer coordination among US EDs, the ways in which it is used, and characteristics of EDs that use telemedicine for transfer coordination. ⋯ Although telemedicine has potential to improve efficiency of regional emergency care systems, it is infrequently used for coordination of transfer between EDs. When used, it is most often to assist with clinical care before transfer.
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Review Meta Analysis
Quality Assurance Processes Ensuring Appropriate Follow-up of Test Results Pending at Discharge in Emergency Departments: A Systematic Review.
In many cases, emergency department (ED) care leads to investigations for which there are not final results at patient disposition. The follow-up for these test results pending at discharge, most commonly final diagnostic imaging reports and microbiology cultures, is a significant safety concern for patients and a medicolegal risk for ED practitioners. Our objective is to perform a systematic review of the literature and report on the structure and outcomes of existing ED quality assurance processes to address these test results pending at discharge. ⋯ A variety of quality assurance processes have been described to follow up on ED test results pending at discharge, and we provided recommendations to improve patient care. All ED leaders should consider implementing these according to their local context.
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We assess the effect of emergency department (ED) operational stressors on clinician scheduling and throughput. ⋯ ED operational stressors had minimal influence on patient throughput when included in adjusted ED clinician scheduling models, whereas temporal and facility factors were more influential. Therefore, incorporating operational stressors into ED clinician scheduling is less likely to balance workloads than accounting for temporal and facility-level factors alone. Length of stay on some shifts, particularly Monday nights, became increasingly long, suggesting they require additional resources.
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Review Case Reports
Man With Left-Sided Chest Pain and Shortness of Breath.
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Review Case Reports
Epsilon Waves in Biventricular Arrythmogenic Cardiomyopathy.