Articles: emergency-services.
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The medical profession has made utilization review a priority in its efforts to limit health care expenditures. In emergency medicine this has ranged from initiatives to limit inappropriate emergency department visits to guidelines to limit emergency department testing and criteria to limit hospital admissions. The emergency department observation unit is an area in which the emergency physicians follow these practice guidelines without compromising patient care. The emergency department utilization review/quality assurance committee is a management tool by which emergency physicians monitor and implement these strategies for cost-effective patient care.
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Involvement with both risk management and quality assurance programs has led many authors to the conclusion that the fundamental differences between these activities are, in fact, very small. "At the point of overlap, it is almost impossible to distinguish the purposes and methods of both functions from one another." "Good risk management includes real improvement in patient care through organized quality assurance activities." The interface between a proactive risk management program and a quality assurance program is dynamic and can serve the legitimate interests of both. There is little to be gained by thinking of them as separate entities and much to be gained by sharing the lessons of both. If one thinks of risk management in terms of "risk" to quality patient care, and that "assuring quality" is the most productive type of risk management, then there is no practical reason to separate one from the other.
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Pediatric trauma centers often do not meet the guidelines requiring a trauma team as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). We reviewed our experience with a team consisting of a pediatric emergency physician, resident, nurse, and respiratory therapist. The surgical and pediatric critical care residents and staff were available within 5 minutes. ⋯ The percentages of patients who were normal, disabled, and dead were 61%, 31.5%, and 7.5%, respectively, at 6 months follow-up. Eleven deaths were expected based on PRISM and TRISS analysis. Our mortality and morbidity figures were comparable with those of centers with teams based on AAP guidelines.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)