EZ-IO Gains Popularity; Public Still Wary

From the St. Paul Pioneer Press, via JEMS:
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A new battery-powered drill is helping paramedics save lives, but it also might be scaring patients.
The handheld device makes injecting fluids and drugs quicker during many high-stress emergencies. It’s unfamiliar to patients and bystanders, though, so one emergency medical services official is hoping to [...]

New Cyanide Antidote

From a press release from the University of Minnesota:
MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (December 26, 2007) – University of Minnesota Center for Drug Design and Minneapolis VA Medical Center researchers have discovered a new fast-acting antidote to cyanide poisoning. The antidote has potential to save lives of those who are exposed to the chemical – namely [...]

The new science of resuscitation is changing the way doctors think about heart attacks—and death itself.

From Newsweek:
Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn’t lost blood. All that’s happened is his heart has stopped beating—the definition of “clinical death”—and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died?
As recently as 1993, when Dr. Sherwin Nuland wrote the best [...]

Costomer Service in Healthcare

From the Physician Executive
Customer service skills (or bedside manner, as it used to be called) are distributed as a bell curve in any random population; some do better than others. But overall, as a profession, as a group of professions and as an industry, don’t we really do better than folks like Verizon and the [...]

CMS Issues Information Regarding Physician 24/7 Coverage Rule

On December 14, CMS issued a survey and certification letter (S&C-08-07) to all state survey agencies providing guidance on enforcing the physician coverage notice requirements included in the Final Inpatient Prospective Payment System (PPS) rule, effective October 1, 2007.
Specifically, the rule requires hospitals that do not have a physician on-site 24 hours per day, 7 [...]

Roadside Medical Clinics: Bringing Care to Truckers

Medgadget Reports:
Hard working members of the trucking community will now find convenient medical services on their way thanks to Roadside Medical Clinics, a company based in Alpharetta, Ga. The company plans to introduce its chain of roadside clinics coast to coast, offering its services “in various subscription packages for an average of $15 to $30 [...]

Specialists Scarce in Hospital ERs

The Wall Street Journal (Health Blog) writing about the Washington Post
As visits to hospital emergency rooms rise, the shortage of medical specialists to treat the patients who show up there is growing, the Washington Post reports.
The dearth of specialists taking on-call duty for emergencies is delaying treatment as patients wait longer for a specialist to [...]

House & Senate Pass Six Month Medicare Fix for 2008

From the EDPMA
Late on Tuesday, December 18, the United States Senate passed by voice vote (unanimous consent) the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Extension Act of 2007 (S. 2499).  The House took up the bill today, Wednesday, December 19, and late in the day passed the measure by a vote of 411-3.  The legislation now moves [...]

Eleven Nails

From ImpactED Nurse
“44-year-old man presented to his local emergency department wearing a baseball cap and complaining of headaches that had progressively worsened over the preceding 11 weeks. After we provided generous analgesia and performed simple investigations that failed to identify a diagnosis, the patient removed his cap to reveal an assortment of metallic objects embedded [...]

Does intraosseous equal intravenous- A pharmacokinetic study

From the American Journal of Emergency Medicine
Abstract
Study Objective
Despite the growing popularity of intraosseous infusion for adults in emergency medicine, to date there has been little research on the pharmacokinetics of intraosseously administered medications in humans. The objective of the study was to compare the pharmacokinetics of intraosseous vs intravenous administration of morphine sulfate in adults.
Methods
The [...]