Background: Patients’ satisfaction has been shown to be associated with improved health outcomes and reduced health care utilization. The Center for Medicare Services (CMS) has linked patient satisfaction to financial incentives as part of the value-based purchasing program. Patient satisfaction in the inpatient setting is measured using the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and [...]

Background: Prolonged hospital stays can decrease bed availability for new patients, place patients at risk for adverse events, and increase costs for the individual and system. There are few published studies that cover data of patients throughout an entire hospital; most only cover data from a specific service line. Our study aims to review patient [...]

Background: Approved medications for opioid-induced constipation (OIC-Rx) are effective for patients with opioid-induced constipation (OIC).[1] Yet, there is little evidence on the real-world impact of OIC-Rx use in the emergency department (ED). This study aimed to compare health care resource utilization (HRU) in hospitals and healthcare costs between patients in the ED who did/did not [...]

Background: Migraine headaches (MHA) are common in children, with severe migraines leading to hospitalization. For children hospitalized with MHA, therapeutic interventions are often directed by subjective descriptors like self-reported pain scores. It has been reported that pain scores have mixed validity especially at younger ages (1–4). Sympathetic response to pain is known to elevate heart [...]

Background: For the academic hospitalist, rounds are the cornerstone of teaching, learning, and patient care. At our institution, a study found that Internal Medicine (IM) residents on the wards spend an average of 3.4 hours rounding daily. However, most residents and attendings described rounds as “inefficient” and “low value.” With this information and with attention [...]

Background: The sub-internship is a crucial clinical experience during which students have the opportunity to assume the intern role in preparation for residency. Despite being a nearly universal rotation across institutions, inconsistencies remain in the knowledge and skills taught during this rotation. Many groups in undergraduate and graduate medical education have worked together to establish [...]

Background: Perioperative medicine is a complexed area of hospitalist medicine, with many nuanced clinical management scenarios. At Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin, Hospital medicine and perioperative medicine are two separate sections within the division of general internal medicine. The sections share some clinical services, including night coverage and sick (“jeopardy”) call. Perioperative medicine [...]

Background: Quality Improvement (QI) is a methodology for solving complex systems problems, and QI methods have been adapted from industry and spread widely across healthcare over the past two decades. QI methods are particularly well-suited for examining clinical processes for effectiveness, reliability, and efficiency. However, Design Thinking (DT) is a problem solving methodology that applies [...]

Background: Hospital throughput and length of stay (LOS) are important drivers of success in an increasingly competitive healthcare landscape where revenues are down and demand can exceed hospital capacity. More specifically, longer LOS and hospital throughput bottlenecks impact access to timely care, the quality and safety of care delivery, patient and family satisfaction, and provider [...]

Case Presentation: A 12-year-old male with a history of hyperhidrosis presented to the emergency department with bilateral foot swelling, pain and fevers. The pain began two days prior to admission after spending several hours in wet shoes. The following day he developed fevers and his swelling and pain worsened such that he was no longer [...]