2 ERs placed on lockdown after chemical scare

From CNN.com
The emergency rooms at two hospitals in Missouri were placed on lockdown Saturday after patients arrived complaining they had been exposed to a chemical.
SSM DePaul Health Center in Bridgeton, Missouri, and St. Anthony’s Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri, admitted the patients and restricted access to their emergency rooms.
The patients were believed to have [...]

ER Access Means No One is Uninsured

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
A think-tank president told the Dallas Morning News this week that no one in this country is truly uninsured.
The law that requires emergency rooms to care for anyone who walks in the door is, ultimately, a form of health insurance, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for [...]

Balance Billing

From the Wall Street Journal Health Blog:
If your doctor or hospital is unhappy with the payment it receives from your insurance company and decides to bill you for the balance, do you have to pay? Often, the answer is no. But, in the morass that is health care billing, plenty of people don’t know that. [...]

LifeBed

From Medgadget:

Hoana Medical has received European clearance to market its LifeBed hospital bed monitoring and notification system. The system comprises of a bed coverlet which monitors breathing and heartbeat, as well as patient movement, and a wall monitor that can interface with communication systems installed in the hospital.

Drunken-driving fatalities drop in 32 states

From CNN.com
Drunken-driving deaths fell in 32 states in 2007, the government reported Thursday, but alcohol-related fatalities increased among motorcycle riders in half the states.
Nearly 13,000 people were killed in crashes in which the driver had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08, the legal limit in the United States, or at higher levels.
Overall, alcohol deaths were [...]

Conflict over a midwife serving the Amish

From the Christian Science Monitor:
The Amish here in Lancaster County may go to the hospital if they break an arm or need surgery, but when it’s time to give birth they stay home. Usually, they deliver their babies with the aid of a midwife, and the women in this waiting room half-joke that if Ms. [...]

Switch to ICD-10 should be very costly

From FierceHealthIT.com
Health IT administrators are far from done in their struggles to implement the new National Provider Identifier number, which has proved to be every bit as troublesome as the industry predicted. But apparently, HHS was determined to raise the angst level further. With its recent announcement that it was pushing for an October 2011 deadline [...]

ACEP Comments on Patient-Centered Medical Home

From the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP):
Caution Is Urged To Avoid Unintended Negative Consequences
Washington, DC -  Widespread implementation of a loosely defined patient-centered medical home (PCMH) could harm people’s access to high-quality emergency care, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), which today issued eight principles regarding the concept.  Dr. Linda  Lawrence, [...]

AHA weighs in on proposed rural clinic rule

From Modern Healthcare:
Certain requirements in the CMS’ proposed rule on rural health clinics are potentially unfair and need to be revised, the American Hospital Association wrote in comments to the agency.
The rule, proposed on June 27, seeks to establish location requirements for rural health clinics, including exception criteria, and would require these clinics to establish [...]

Emergency Physicians Good at Spotting an Emerging MI

From MedPage Today:
Emergency department physicians are fairly accurate when it comes to detecting evolving myocardial infarctions even when cardiac markers are not initially elevated, researchers said.
Emergency physicians’ initial impression was MI, unstable angina, or high-risk chest pain as often for patients presenting with an evolving heart attack as for those with STEMI (76% versus 71%), [...]