Safety Success Stores-I love these "testimonies" for our staff. Four more this week-nurse caught drug allergy stopped IV Meds, Clerk caught wrong patient name on MD order sheet, nurse caught wrong (by one letter) native language, and ER MD caught mistake inaccurate "Night Hawk" CT scan read, ER Secretary, and ER Manager were persisted for patient to return to ER.
ER patient through put-It's complexity is scary I used to see it more as an efficiency issue. Yet, it is very much a part of the violence in ER. We are creating a pressure cooker with "impaired" (from many sources) angry people in a contained physical area. I did a search "ER Staff Violence" on my "Smart" phone using Medscape-Emergency website-there were 68 hits. I sent three of them to Senior Admin and ER leaders. We are close to finishing our "status 13" this is related to Gang threats to ER staff/patients. Another facet of this is a new mass communication system so other hospital staff know there is a "Status 13 or Gang event" in ER, so they do not come to ER to discharge patients on Evening shifts. I wonder how long it will be before we have metal detectors? They are in schools and/or airports for safety.....I make sure I walk through the ER Lobby daily multiple times, especially when senior administration leaders are with me, Seeing is believing!" I am quickly making friends with Protection Services.
Setting up our staff for conflict-there are four different reports related to ER throughput in three different modules in our HIS. Each report focus on a segment of the process. Examples 1) ER Tracker in ER Module, 2) Beds on each floor in PCS module, 3) Bed tracker in PCS module, and another 4) Bed tracker neither ER or PCS module. Who does this stuff? I wondering who is more "impaired" the people who set these reports up or the patients in waiting room. (Sorry ER Humor) Guess what? the two Bedtracker reports show conflicting information-one shows bed clean (but the cleaning process can be hidden if you force admission to soon.) the other shows bed dirty because House keeping staff check in and out via phone.
Healthgrades Clinical Excellence Awards-Yes! We got the word, the 2010-2011 awards we will be here in 3-weeks. This is so important, to recognize the hard work by so many folks. The ER MDs want to be in the pictures!!
Lynx-is back, we are now hiring 1.0 to 0.6 FTE to do the additional review of documentation. We are reassessing who the two (three to be) ER Coders should report to.
Computerized Provider Order Management (CPOM) -goes live June 14. Staff Training started last week
ER Scribes program-Very interesting presentation by two ER MDs regarding their use of ER Scribes. We have about 50% of ER MDs using them. Many good things about this program.