Background: Sepsis is the leading cause of death in US hospitals, and prompt recognition and treatment is critical. To improve general floor sepsis care, our hospital created a “sepsis squashing squadron” (S3) – a response team that uses scoring tools displayed in the EHR to improve efficiency, sensitivity, and specificity of sepsis identification. We previously [...]

Background: Indwelling urinary catheters (IDUCs) are commonplace in hospital medicine wards, facilitating patient care but introducing risks such as catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs). The urgency to minimize these complications has spurred initiatives to refine catheter utilization protocols. This study examines the efficacy of the Foley Removal Countdown Strategy, a novel, proactive approach in the [...]

Background: Healthcare expenditures in the US have been increasing at an unsustainable rate, and thus there is a strong interest in resource stewardship of low-value diagnostic tests. At our institution, internal data, as well as The Vizient™ Clinical Data Base, showed high utilization of inpatient daily labs (complete blood count (CBC), basic metabolic panel (BMP) [...]

Background: Sepsis is a major cause of mortality in hospitalized patients, and early treatment is critical to survival. However, there is a paucity of research on methods to assist real-time clinical decision-making for sepsis treatment. Utilizing data on patients who had sepsis in the ICU, we propose a novel data-driven framework for recommending treatments by [...]

Background: The physical exam for heart failure can be limited by poor reproducibility, lack of specificity, provider inexperience, or patient habitus. To estimate the JVP or HJR requires identifying the internal jugular vein (IJV). Finding the IJV can be limited by those factors but the addition of ultrasound can improve its identification. Ultrasound can therefore [...]

Background: Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots, like ChatGPT (from Open-AI), have received widespread attention in the last year for their ability to process large amounts of text data and produce human-like script responses on a wide array of topics. In particular, LLM chatbots have performed well in areas of patient communication, whether it’s answering cardiovascular [...]

Background: Many electronic health record (EHRs) systems offer secure messaging which allows for asynchronous, text message-based communication. Increasingly electronic messaging is replacing more traditional methods of communication such as paging, yet there is limited research on the impact of this transition. Studies have shown that healthcare workers find text communication to be more efficient than [...]

Background: Heart failure (HF) hospital readmissions are a leading cause of US 30-day hospital readmissions. Factors related to clinical complexity and unmet social needs are among the key drivers associated with HF negative clinical outcomes. Digital platforms have shown promise in improving HF outcomes but limitations like patient lack of familiarity with technology and unmet [...]

Background: eHealth interventions provide opportunities to enhance asthma or COPD self-management, though eHealth literacy (eHL) needs to be evaluated in this population. We evaluated the association between eHL and self-efficacy, as well as the willingness to use eHealth applications in patients hospitalized for chronic lung diseases (i.e., asthma and COPD). Methods: This cross-sectional observational study [...]

Background: Respiratory failure is the most common organ failure syndrome in US hospitals (1). Hospitalists strive to detect the earliest signs of respiratory instability. Measurement of respiratory vital signs (like respiratory rate & oximetry) is a necessary aspect of risk stratification, but it is not sufficient. In one study, 46% of hospitalized patients had no [...]