ethurman

I have had pts transferred to our psych unit from another hosp. where the physician medically cleared the patient (pt with history of COPD) said the pt was hallucinating. Asked for ABGs this MD was offended asked about labs he said, "pt needs psych she'll be there in 30min" This hospital and the hospital I worked at r in the same corp. The pt arrived to the hosp. When EMS was bringing pt off the elevator the pt went into resp arrest we had to code the pt--was successful and transfer to ICU. Pts ABGs were out of whack. After pt was stable med. confusion and hall miracleously vanished. This same doc sent us another pt he said was medically clear and went straight into ICU due to ABGs out of whack again. We also established a policy that any pt we were going to admit either brought with them a statement from their family doc of med. clearance with routine set of labs: cbc, thyroid prof, EKG, bmp, ua any abn doc was to address if not referred by family doc they were seen by our ER and medically cleared with the above labs done also. When we received a call for referral we informed the referral source that we would consider them for admission but they have to be medically cleared prior to arriving on our unit that meant statement and results of labs.