The MEP blog has moved! Please change your bookmarks and links and visit www.emergencydocs.com/blog. - The MEP Team Continue reading

After five months of helping to manage the emergency department at Bristol Hospital, it is tempting to talk about the various changes in the department - our metrics, efficiencies, ongoing efforts to improve throughput, or our relations with nursing, ancillary services, and other departments within the hospital. But I fall... Continue reading

Traditional observation units often focus on chest pain and a few other diagnosis. But as the health care market continues to change, so has the need to decrease length of stay, decrease re-admissions, and streamline patent care. Continue reading

The national trend toward overcrowding in emergency rooms is having an interesting effect on a process that was conceived to handle a large number of injured patients: triage. One might expect that as more and more patients flow into the ER, the process of triage would become even more central... Continue reading

There are a thousand places to look for cost savings in healthcare, but this week in Washington State officials grappled with one of the most visible of those: emergency care. Thankfully, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire has suspended implementation of a rule that would have denied emergency rooms payment from Medicaid if the patient was diagnosed with a range of certain diagnosis deemed to be non-emergencies. Continue reading

Ben Franklin’s famous dictate that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is true when it comes to malpractice prevention as well. Continue reading

In the Emergency Department, our team is made up of varied players: from healthcare providers, to clerical staff, to housekeeping. Each “player” needs to recognize his or her importance in making the team perform at optimal efficiency. Continue reading

As a citizen it’s easy to clamor for rights. It’s much harder to live up to our responsibilities. And so it is in health care. Continue reading

The old saying about the doctor who tells a patient to “take two of these and call me in the morning” is losing its meaning in today’s modern healthcare system. Continue reading

It’s easy to lose sight of the difference between our role as acute care providers and all the other front-line clinicians who also deal with chronic pain and chronic abusers. Continue reading

I read with some interest, and some amusement, stories like “A real ‘doc fix,’” published this week in the New York Times. Basically it says we need to pay docs for quality and in the end that will generate lower costs for the system. Continue reading

The Maryland health information exchange (HIE) described in the Washington Post last week represents a step that is a long time coming, but it is not nearly the end. Continue reading

As MEP begins to roll out quality improvement programs at its new hospital partner in Bristol, the STEMI Shark program is being replicated. Continue reading

When it comes to recruiting, many of the emergency physicians and residents at AAEM in San Diego this year want many of the same things that drew me to MEP in the first place. Continue reading

I recently spent a week working clinically at MEP’s new partner, Bristol Hospital in Connecticut. I heard many comments from nurses and techs about how happy they are that our top leadership is there and that they can already see quite a difference, Continue reading

I was recently reminded by a patient experience that the best medicine sometimes is no medicine at all. Continue reading

As a preparation for my next few night shifts in a place where I never thought I would be practicing, I am bringing a few tools with me. These tools include the ability to listen to patients and to extend a hand in a time of need, 20 years of experience treating patients in emergency medicine and a willingness to continue to learn to do it better. Continue reading

It’s no big surprise that there is anxiety when a new management group takes over an Emergency Department. The question is, what can a group like Medical Emergency Professionals do to effectively confront that anxiety? Continue reading

ER docs as you might imagine are pretty good at dealing with emergencies. In fact, we are so trained in the practice of triage in our daily work lives that it is easy to get distracted from what is critical in the long term. As 2012 gets rolling, there are... Continue reading

Once, a really long time ago, before blogs if you can conceive of such a time, I embarked on a part-time writing career. My subject matter was the parade of frailty, the courage and the just plain bizarre that were to be found daily – hourly – in the ER.... Continue reading

Nobody is perfect. This is especially true in the emergency department. It is an inherently chaotic environment with no set schedule, dealing with a wide array of problems, often with incomplete resources and information. This setting leaves plenty of room for error but also improvement. Improvements can be dictated from... Continue reading

There is a middle group of patients whose complaints and symptoms are more difficult to diagnose and therefore cannot easily be placed either into a clear emergency or non-emergency scenario. Continue reading

USA Today this week published another story on the continuing theme of innovative health systems and physician leaders who are finding big cost savings while providing better patient care. I know most if not all physicians are interested in providing more cost-effective care, but a recent encounter in the ER led me to wonder whether patients are ready for the same thing. Continue reading

Two years ago, Sade Davis was technically dead. Now, two years after being revived by EMTs and brought to the Southern Maryland Hospital Emergency Room, MEP is pleased to welcome Sade back to the ER, where she has been hired as a Chart Manager. Continue reading