Annals of emergency medicine
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The financial realities of the current health care arena make it imperative that deliverers of trauma care initiate programs that reduce the cost of trauma. Triage can be one process that attempts to attain this goal. ⋯ This tiered, in-house response system differs with respect to human and material resources. Personnel, operating room, laboratory work, and protective wear savings account for approximately $1,042 per code patient, yielding an annual $629,404 institutional savings.
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Incidents involving releases of hazardous materials are increasing. Providing medical care to patients who may be contaminated with a hazardous material requires advance planning and specialized training and equipment. Failure to adequately prepare for this situation can result in costly contamination of medical facilities and toxic exposures to health care providers. Federal regulations may require hospitals to supply health care providers with training and protective equipment for these situations.
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Hospital disaster planning should encompass events that affect the safety of the hospital environment and address those measures that ensure the availability of necessary services. Although most of the emphasis has been placed on general disaster planning, there is little written about disasters occurring within a hospital. In recent years, several incidents at our medical center involving fire, flood, and power failure resulted in a reevaluation of our preparedness to handle such situations. These experiences prompted this discussion and literature review of internal disaster plan because it is likely that at some time an internal emergency may occur.
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To determine whether intracranial hemorrhage is a predictor of occult cervical-spine fracture. ⋯ Despite a high percentage of patients with traumatic intracranial hemorrhage, our study failed to demonstrate that intracranial hemorrhage is predictor of occult cervical-spine fracture.