AED Fails to Perform for Virginia Metro Station Heart Attack Patient

From JEMS:

Metro officials confirm one of their Automated External Defibrillators or AED’s failed to work on Monday after a Metro rider suffered an apparent heart attack at the Pentagon Station. 51-year old Eugene McCrea was later transported to Virginia Hospital Center where he was pronounced dead.

The AED’s battery was not charged and wasn’t able to fire off enough current to give the victim a shock. It’s not known  if the AED would have saved the man’s life, but the failure has prompted Metro officials to check all of their 46 AED’s throughout their stations. That review was ordered to be completed within a 24 hour time frame.

Medicare moves to tie doctors’ pay to quality and cost of care

From the Washington Post:

Twenty-thousand physicians in four Midwest states received a glimpse into their financial future last month. Landing in their e-mail inboxes were links to reports from Medicare showing the amount their patients cost on average as well as the quality of the care they provided. The reports also showed how Medicare spending on each doctor’s patients compared with their peers in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.

The “resource use” reports, which Medicare plans to eventually provide to doctors nationwide, are one of the most visible phases of the government’s effort to figure out how to enact a complex, delicate and little-noticed provision of the 2010 health-care law: paying more to doctors who provide quality care at lower cost to Medicare, and reducing payments to physicians who run up Medicare’s costs without better results.

Can Scribes Help Improve Emergency Practice Productivity?

From Becker’s:

Providers want to practice medicine and not be overburdened by time-consuming documentation requirements. Scribes relieve the provider of some of these burdens (though, it must be noted that documentation is legally the provider’s responsibility, which the scribe supplements). As described, scribes are accepting roles that include taking elements of patient history, tracking down test results, etc. As well, patient satisfaction improves if the physician can provide more time for patient interaction.

Washington State Hospitals and Emergency Physicians Unveil Alternative Plan For ER Visits

From Northwest Public Radio:

The state has been trying to crack down on ER visits for conditions that are not critical. But health care providers say the state’s policies go too far, they’re unsafe for patients, and will shift costs to hospitals.

Hospitals and emergency room doctors want to address the problem their own way. They’ve put together what they call best practices for reducing unnecessary ER visits. A key component of that is using an electronic health information system.

Dr. Nathan Schlicher is an ER doctor who helped draft the alternative plan. He says the system will help hospitals share patient information, especially those who frequent ER’s to get pain medication.

After Hospitalization, Men More Likely to Show Up in ER

From US News:

Men are much more likely than women to require urgent hospital care within a month of being discharged from the hospital, a new study finds.

Researchers followed 367 men and 370 women for 30 days after they were discharged from the Boston Medical Center to determine if gender played a role in the need for follow-up urgent care, including readmission to the hospital.