Emergency Medicine News and Research

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Lowering door-to-balloon times helps benefit STEMI patients, study finds

While all heart attacks have the potential to be deadly, one type is referred to as the "widow maker" because of its high risk of death. A ST segment elevation myocardial infarction is a severe type of heart attack that occurs when a blockage in a coronary artery causes heart muscle to die; without prompt treatment risk of fatality increases dramatically. Coronary angioplasty, or percutaneous coronary intervention, is the most common emergency treatment for STEMI.

30 Apr 2013

Analysis examines national expenditures on emergency care

Alternately praised in the aftermath of horrible tragedies as a heroic service and lamented in policy debates as an expensive safety net for people without primary care, emergency medicine is often a hot topic.

30 Apr 2013

Research roundup: Young women and delays in breast cancer diagnosis

Adolescents and young adults (ages 15-39) make up 5 and 6 percent of all breast cancer cases in the United States and have the lowest five-year survival rates.

30 Apr 2013

Low-tech teaching techniques may improve training on pediatric CPR

New, low-tech teaching techniques used by novice instructors may improve training for healthcare providers in performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on children who suffer cardiac arrest.

25 Apr 2013

Directed training facilitates out-of-hours emergency brain scans

An intensive teaching session helps emergency department physicians to reliably interpret head computed tomography scans when a radiologist is not on duty, a study shows.

25 Apr 2013

Psychiatric care: The poor stepchild in the world of insurance coverage

Long waits for insurance authorization allowing psychiatric patients to be admitted to the hospital from the emergency department waste thousands of hours of physician time, given that most requests for authorization are ultimately granted.

25 Apr 2013

Harvard researchers find lengthy waits for severely ill psychiatric patients

A study published today [Tuesday, April 23] in Annals of Emergency Medicine reports lengthy waits for severely ill psychiatric patients in need of immediate hospitalization in the Boston area, due in part to time-consuming prior authorizations required by insurance companies.

24 Apr 2013

Physician receives $3M grant from NIAAA to validate teen alcohol-screening initiative

Hasbro Children's Hospital emergency medicine physician James Linakis, M.D., Ph.D, was recently awarded a five-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to validate a more efficient test to screen teenagers for future alcohol abuse and other risk behaviors.

23 Apr 2013

T-System to deploy NextGen Practice Management solution to optimize revenue cycle

NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: QSII) and a leading provider of healthcare information systems and connectivity solutions, announced today that T-System, Inc., will deploy NextGen® Practice Management to help drive revenue cycle management billing for its clients, which span across the U.S.

22 Apr 2013

Young asthmatic patients have lowest levels of health insurance coverage

It is widely accepted that medical insurance helps older adults with chronic health problems to receive better care. But what about young adults between the ages of 18 and 25, a demographic that also tends to have the lowest levels of health insurance coverage?

22 Apr 2013

Study highlights the challenges that exist in ECG interpretation

Incorporating an electrocardiogram (ECG) during pre-participation screening for athletes has demonstrated a reduction in incidence of sudden cardiac death (SCD); however, it remains controversial in the United States due to minimal usage and high false-positive readings.

22 Apr 2013

MCG, Vighter Medical Group to provide medical support to FBI's field operations

A small Minnesota-based medical direction and support-company and Georgia's public medical school have teamed up to provide supplemental medical support to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's field operations.

18 Apr 2013

UI Health to launch EPIC program to cut frequent ER visits, readmissions to hospital

The University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System is taking steps to reduce frequent emergency room visits and readmissions to the hospital.

17 Apr 2013

Large numbers of ER visits go unreported in calculating hospital readmission rates

A study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University School of Medicine has found that nearly one quarter of patients may return to the emergency department within 30 days of being discharged from a hospitalization.

17 Apr 2013

Average annual incidence of sepsis varies depending on method used

Though the toll of sepsis is known to be enormous - it is estimated to cost the U.S. health care system $24.3 billion each year, and is the nation's third-leading killer, behind heart disease and cancer - the true magnitude of incidence of and death from the illness remains unknown.

16 Apr 2013

Nearly 8% of patients in VHA visit emergency department two or more times per year: Study

Even with health insurance, ready access to preventive, specialty and behavioral health care and comprehensive electronic medical records, nearly 8 percent of patients in the Veterans Health Administration visit the emergency department two or more times per year, according to a study published online Tuesday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("What Drives Frequent Emergency Department Use in an Integrated Health System: National Data from the Veterans Health Administration").

15 Apr 2013

GP clinics at hospitals: an interview with Dr Sharma, Monash University

Around 13 per cent of hospitals have a primary care unit within the emergency department and 6 per cent have a free standing primary care unit.

11 Apr 2013

Handheld ultrasound devices: an interview with Warren Ortmann, Signostics

Ultrasound devices use sound waves to image the organs of the body safely, without the use of radiation. The sound waves are produced by applying a current to a piezoelectric crystal housed in a transducer. The crystal alters shape and creates a sound wave.

3 Apr 2013

Emergency room providers need to ask suicidal patients about access to firearms: Study

Although guns are used in over half of all American suicides, a new study shows that many emergency room doctors and nurses do not routinely ask suicidal patients about their access to firearms.

2 Apr 2013

New study finds for-profit hospitals outscore other hospitals on performance measures

For-profit hospitals are out-performing other hospitals when treating stroke, heart attack and pneumonia patients in emergency departments and, thus, will be more likely to receive bonuses under Medicare's new payment rules, according to a new Northwestern Medicine- study.

2 Apr 2013