ABEM HALM case studies
ABEM HALM · Put your knowledge to work in context.
The ABEM Health Care Administration, Leadership, and Management (HALM) subspecialty certification is offered by the American Board of Emergency Medicine for physicians who want to demonstrate focused expertise in running and leading health care organizations. It is aimed at emergency physicians who hold primary ABEM certification and whose careers include administrative, leadership, or management responsibilities - roles such as emergency department director, medical staff or group leader, hospital or system executive, quality and patient safety officer, or operations and finance lead. The ABEM HALM case studies are 5 cases and about 3,489 words.
1ED Throughput and the Boarded Psychiatric Patient
A 420-bed community hospital with a 28-bed ED has averaged 11 psychiatric boarders per day for three weeks, each waiting a median of 31 hours for an inpatient psychiatric bed. Two of the four behavioral-health sitters call out; nursing leadership reports the ED holds admitted medical patients an average of 6.2 hours.
806 words, about 4 min2Nurse Staffing Ratio Under a Budget Cut
You are the nurse manager of a 32-bed medical-surgical unit. The hospital has mandated a 4% reduction in nursing labor cost next quarter.
718 words, about 4 min3Choosing Between Two Quality Improvement Priorities
You are the physician quality officer for a 200-bed hospital. Two problems compete for the same quality-improvement resources next year: (1) sepsis mortality, where the hospital's observed-to-expected ratio is 1.18 and the SEP-1 bundle compliance is 62%, and (2) surgical site infections in colorectal surgery, where the SSI rate is 4.8% versus a national benchmark of about 3%, with roughly 60 colorectal cases per year.
741 words, about 4 min4Designing a Leadership Response to a Safety Event
A patient on a telemetry unit received a tenfold overdose of a high-alert medication because two vials with similar labels were stocked side by side in the automated dispensing cabinet. The patient required transfer to the ICU and recovered.
585 words, about 3 min5Deciding Whether to Adopt a New Clinical Technology
Your 150-bed hospital is considering purchasing an AI-based sepsis early-warning system. The vendor cites a published study showing a 20% relative reduction in sepsis mortality at a large academic center.
639 words, about 3 min