It was 3 a.m. and 3 degrees outside, and I was about to discharge Mike from our emergency department for the third time in less than 24 hours.
“Doc, let me finish this episode,” he said, his eyes glued to the TV in the ER waiting room.
Mike was homeless, and this was our routine all winter last year, when it was too cold to sleep in shop doorways or the bridge under …
As emergency physicians, we write prescriptions for patients that we discharge home for all manner of presenting complaints. I used to believe that the overwhelming majority of these prescriptions would be filled by the patient after discharge.
It turns out I was wrong.
Research estimates that patients discharged from emergency departments (EDs) fail to pick up their high urgency prescriptions, like antibiotics, nearly 35 percent of the time.
This is problematic because failure …
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