End-User vs. Risk Management: Expectations of the EMR
July 10, 2017
Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems were developed to satisfy several important needs (I will use EMR and EHR interchangeably). Just to name a few: legible documentation of patient encounters, satisfaction of coding and billing requirements, regulatory compliance, prevention of medication errors, clinical pathway utilization, medical-legal defensibility, and data compilation. Having…Read More
Should Your EHR Documentation Templates Include Chief Complaint-Specific Content?
July 7, 2017
As a follow-up to last week’s article The History of EMRs: Opportunities to Improve Patient Safety, we explore the philosophy around providing EHR documentation templates that include specialty-specific, chief complaint clinical content. Doing so provokes a few big-picture questions about healthcare information technology and the appropriate strategy for designing clinical applications that providers work with…Read More
SLIDESHARE: The ABCs of Healthcare Risk Management
July 7, 2017
One of our goals at The Sullivan Group is to bring you practical pearls to reduce risk, improve patient safety, and enhance quality in your everyday practice. To that end I thought I would share with you this “alphabet soup” of healthcare risk management and patient safety tips assembled from years of observation and experience….Read More
The History of EMRs & Opportunities to Improve Patient Safety
June 29, 2017
Over the next eight weeks, we will be providing information on EHRs/EMRs that have proven to improve patient safety, reduce medical errors and reduce litigation. In this first week, we provide historical context on the events leading up to today’s current state of electronic provider documentation. This series aims to help shed light on the…Read More
Preeclampsia Treatment
June 26, 2017
With preeclampsia affecting 10% of all pregnancies and rates rising by 25% in the past two decades, it is important to test your knowledge and ensure that all your patients have a strong understanding of the dangers of preeclampsia. This is part II of a two-part series. Part I focused on definitions, risks, prevention and…Read More
Do Clinical Competency, Patient Safety and Nurse Turnover Rates Correlate?
June 23, 2017
Our mission at The Sullivan Group is to positively change clinical practice, improve patient safety and reduce malpractice litigation. Because of this, we are often asked by clinical leaders and clients to explore the impact our RSQ® Solutions platform may have on other areas of the healthcare business. A Chief Nursing Officer with whom we…Read More
Improving Healthcare Handoffs
June 19, 2017
Any discussion of communication in healthcare must include the process of transferring patients and their vital medical information from one provider to another and/or from one healthcare setting to another. Such transfers are known as healthcare handoffs; examples include when a patient is transferred from an ambulance to an ED or when a surgical patient is moved…Read More
Case: Is Lumbar Puncture Necessary to Rule Out Subarachnoid Hemorrhage?
June 12, 2017
The case presentation will be a little different than our typical failure to diagnose an aortic disaster or other common “failure to diagnose” entity in emergency medicine. Although those are great teaching cases, there is another critically important side to the patient safety coin. It is critical to do the appropriate testing to identify potentially…Read More
MEDITECH Physician Documentation in the ED: Chief Complaint-Specific vs. General Templates
June 7, 2017
As electronic medical records have evolved, so have physician documentation methods. Based on our observations in recent years, we have noticed that as organizations migrated away from paper templates, many only developed two or three generic electronic documentation templates for physicians to use (Adult Template, Pediatric Template, Trauma Template). Source: Hubspot
Vulnerable Adult & Elder Abuse
June 5, 2017
There are a number of laws in the various states that prohibit the abuse or exploitation of certain classes of people. The classes of persons who are protected generally include those who are particularly vulnerable to abuse and who may be incapable of defending themselves. The prohibition against child abuse is inherent in virtually all…Read More
