American College of Emergency Physicians

See the following -

In The Hospital, A Bad Translation Can Destroy A Life

Kristian Foden-Vencil | NPR | October 27, 2014

Translating from one language to another is a tricky business, and when it comes to interpreting between a doctor and patient, the stakes are even higher. Consider the story of 18-year-old baseball player Willie Ramirez. In 1980, Ramirez was taken to a South Florida hospital in a coma, says Helen Eby, a certified medical interpreter in Oregon. "His family apparently used the word 'intoxicado' to talk about this person," she says. "Well, 'intoxicado' in Spanish just means that you ingested something. It could be food; it could be a drug; it could be anything that has made you sick"...

Read More »

Is U.S. Health Care Unprepared For Ebola?

Garance Burke | Top Tech News | October 30, 2014

The U.S. health care apparatus is so unprepared and short on resources to deal with the deadly Ebola virus that even small clusters of cases could overwhelm parts of the system, according to an Associated Press review of readiness at hospitals and other components of the emergency medical network...

Read More »

The Company Behind Many Surprise Emergency Room Bills

Julie Creswell, Reed Abelson, and Margot Sanger-Katz | The New York Times | July 24, 2017

Early last year, executives at a small hospital an hour north of Spokane, Wash., started using a company called EmCare to staff and run their emergency room. The hospital had been struggling to find doctors to work in its E.R., and turning to EmCare was something hundreds of other hospitals across the country had done. That's when the trouble began. Before EmCare, about 6 percent of patient visits in the hospital's emergency room were billed for the most complex, expensive level of care. After EmCare arrived, nearly 28 percent for the highest-level billing code...

Read More »

US Will Screen Air Passengers For Signs Of Ebola. Will It Work?

Maryn McKenna | WIRED | October 9, 2014

If you’ve been following the Ebola story, you may have noticed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced a move yesterday to try to keep the disease off US soil. At the five US airports that receive most passengers from the three countries where Ebola is circulating, passengers will be singled out on the basis of their travel records; interviewed by means of a questionnaire; and have their temperature taken, to see if they have a fever...

Read More »