Business Description

Emergency physicians are often at the frontline to provide acute care to patients who present without an appointment. The unplanned nature of patient arrivals means that emergency doctors can face a broad spectrum of illnesses and injuries while under a considerable amount of pressure. Some conditions may be life-threatening and require a doctor’s immediate attention. A medical malpractice insurer conducted a study of 332 emergency medicine claims and revealed the four most common patient allegations:

Diagnostic-related concerns —Physicians failed to establish a differential diagnosis or failed to consider available clinical information

Inadequately managing treatment — For example, the doctors failed to stabilize an accident victim’s head which then resulted in paraplegia
Improperly performing a procedure or treatment — this included intubation of the respiratory tract

Failing to order appropriate medication — such as not initiating a specified therapy for a stroke victim within the recommended time frames

According to the study, 57 percent of cases involved inadequate patient assessment which researchers noted as the number-one contributor to failures in diagnosis. This included not using available clinical information. Other factors that were identified as contributing to patient injury included:

Patient factors, such as obesity, sometimes caused delays in treatment due to inadequate equipment, for example in treating or evaluating obese patients and having a properly sized gurney for transportation.

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