(2) Overcrowding in ED treatment areas threatens public health by compromising patient safety and jeopardising the reliability of the entire US emergency care system. (3) Although the causes of ED overcrowding are complex, the main cause is inadequate inpatient capacity for a patient population with an increasing severity of illness. (4) Potential solutions for ED overcrowding will require multidisciplinary system-wide support. Solution - Boarding Patients – isits to hospital emergency departments (EDs) have increased greatly in recent years, contributing to crowded conditions and ambulance diversions.1 Contrary to the popular belief that uninsured people are
As these programs are developed strategies and standards are addressed and barriers identified to ensure success of preventing falls. Falls are a serious concern among the elderly population, and a major concern within the health care community. Falls are the most adverse event reported in hospitals and are leading cause of death in patients 65 years or older. Nation-wide the average rate for a first fall range from 2.2 to 3.6 per 1000 patient days. Litigations related to hospital falls is growing in both frequency and severity; hospital administrators are in a quandary on how to reduce patient falls.
Rather than reverse the problems they purport to fix, these unwarranted procedures can often lead to greater health problems and even death. A 1995 report by Milliman & Robertson, Inc. concluded that nearly 60 percent of all surgeries performed are medically unnecessary, according to Under The Influence of Modern Medicine by Terry A. Rondberg. Some of the most major and frequently performed unnecessary surgeries include hysterectomies, Cesarean sections and coronary artery bypass surgeries. Coronary bypasses are the most common unnecessary surgeries in America In a nation plagued by heart disease, it often seems that the knee-jerk reaction of American doctors is to treat heart problems with surgery. However, many of the heart surgeries performed each year are unnecessary procedures that could be putting the patients' lives at greater risk.
Number of patients admitted for pressure ulcers cannot be controlled but hospital-acquired pressure ulcers can. The National Quality Forum (NQF) a non-profit organization with the support from CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) have developed a list with serious and costly healthcare errors called “never events.” These errors which include stage III and stage IV pressure ulcers may cause serious injury or death to the patient and result in increased cost. The Joint Commission has implemented National Patient Safety goals to monitor specific interventions and outcomes. The regular use of a validated risk assessment tool to identify high risk patients in order to prevent injury is an example of a safety goal. The Joint Commission also tracks information on “sentinel events which result in unanticipated death or permanent loss of function.” These sentinel events refer to loss of function due to pressure ulcers.
At MGH the decline was 87.6% in 1988 to 78.4% in 1993 as well. Because of their high medical cost and lack of primary care physicians, 30% of the hospitals revenues were at risk, giving the opportunity to other hospitals to provide these services and create price competition based on Chapter 495. The reduction of gross patient service revenue at MGH and BWH were affected by the changes in government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the enactment of chapter 495. These programs along with many insurance companies adopted the Prospective Payment System (PPS) which began monitoring hospital charges and refusing payment for unnecessary services. The hospitals were receiving a standardized payment for each service
An Institute of Medicine report estimates that medical errors cost the nation 17 billion dollars in preventable medical errors each year (“A Guide,” 2011). In addition, these errors rob the medical community of the trust and confidence of its patients. This paper will explore: why the Joint Commission goals are important, examples of problems that have been experienced, potential hindrances to meeting these goals, and strategies to help maintain adherence to these goals. It goes without saying that it is of paramount importance to the safety and well-being of a patient to be correctly identified and to have medications administered safely. There are hundreds of patients in a hospital; and at any given time there may be several with the same last name.
The controversy of environmental pollution has affected our security of economic cost, causes harm to our health, destruction to our structures. To start, when people get illnesses caused by pollutants in our environment, they are forced use their income on their new medical expenses. Expenditures that would never have come to be if not for the lack of care for the environment. This leads to more spending and a lower standard of living for the family. Money that was used for the “extras in life” would go to medical needs.
Applying the O.B Mod. to the Healthcare Industry Research paper Brady Johnson Organizational Behavior MGMT 630 Instructor: Dr. August Bruehlman Chadron State College Abstract The healthcare industry, as a whole, is plagued with errors that result in tens of thousands of deaths and costs several billion dollars in the United States yearly. As these errors cost both human lives and have huge financial impacts on organizations they must be improved upon. Improving upon issues in the healthcare industry has proved to be very challenging with one of the primary difficulties being that the healthcare industry is entirely dependent on a human process, and therefore it becomes difficult to identify or even quantify the causes of the problem. Therefore it is the primary position of this paper, that to reduce these errors in the healthcare industry an organizational behavior approach will need to be taken.
Having poor communication skills can cause serious issues between health care staff and providers. “Poor communication skills within a health care setting can result in misunderstanding and faulty decisions that could adversely affect a patient’s health and well-being” (Ponte 2011). Poor Communication [Communication failure is a huge contributor in clinical outcomes. A major part of information flow comes from communication between health care workers. Communication errors were found to be the main cause of hospital deaths.
The risk of medication error can be fatal and leads to medico legal. Research had proven that, even in a developed country such as United Stated, having a high number of patients harmed by medication error. No one can deny that the cost involved in medication error is too costly to healthcare industry, even to the patients and family and to all the healthcare providers as well. The strategies to prevent medication errors are by using the IT system (Karen, 2014). Here I would like to share an incident took place in my own hospital were a fatal medication error took place and the hospital got to bare the high cost to compensate the patient and their family.