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OIG: Emergency staffing, on-call systems suffer at physician-owned hospitals

Emergency Management Alert, January 15, 2008

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) says the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)--which currently does not have a system in place to track physician-owned specialty hospitals--should take steps to ensure that such facilities are able to handle emergencies.

This is only one of  many recommendations the agency made in a report released last week, "Physician-Owned Specialty Hospitals' Ability to Manage Medical Emergencies (OEI-02-06-00310)."

"In reviewing these documents," the authors wrote, "we specifically looked for how the hospital instructs staff to respond to medical emergencies, the procedures that should be followed, and any guidance about the transfer of patients to other hospitals."

In assessing preparedness, the OIG collected and reviewed each hospital's staffing policies.

Issues with staffing prevail. The OIG wants to know if hospitals are able to determine how many employees are on duty for different shifts and whether the facility designates a certain response time for on-call staff.

The report's attention to on-call issues is certainly timely, no matter what type of hospital you're in. A January 7 story in the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Emergency illustrates flaws in on-call system," appeared in our inbox at about the same time as the OIG PDF that read, "[Facilities] without emergency departments note that as a safety precaution, their hospital will not admit patients with certain conditions. They explain that they will not admit patients needing intensive care or a higher level of care than the hospital can provide." The San Diego story involved the delay in treatment of a man whose hand had been severed in a construction accident.
 

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