Background: Observation units have been used to decrease unnecessary inpatient admissions, which have improved cost and resource utilization as well as overall patient satisfaction (1). As a result, 42% (and growing) of hospitals nationally now utilize observation units, with a sizable amount directed by hospitalists (2). Despite their growth and advantages, observation units are not [...]

Background: The U.S. population is aging rapidly, with adults ≥65 expected to rise from 18% today to 23% by 2054 (1). Hospital medicine must evolve to meet the increasingly complex needs of this population. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the John A. Hartford Foundation have pioneered age friendly care movement through the evidence-based 4M [...]

Background: Hospitalization frequently leads to functional decline in older adults due to immobility, acute illness, and iatrogenic factors. Nutritional status often deteriorates concurrently because of reduced appetite, restrictive diets, and physical barriers. Together, deconditioning and malnutrition increase morbidity, prolong hospital stay, and raise readmission risk. This project evaluated the impact of structured early mobility interventions [...]

Background: Longevity and preventive medicine are rapidly gaining attention as people seek strategies to extend healthspan—the years of robust physical and cognitive function. While hospitalists primarily care for patients during acute illness, we should not exclude ourselves from this healthspan revolution. Hospitalization represents a powerful, underused opportunity to study resilience—the biological and functional capacity to [...]

Background: Our group was compelled to pre-schedule backup rounders (16th and 17th providers) due to the rising and unpredictable hospital census. These shifts were often paid at premium rates, resulting in avoidable costs and inefficiencies, irrespective of the actual census, as perceived by the providers. From 2023 through early 2025, decisions to activate backup hospitalists [...]

Background: Patients with impaired renal function are at an increased risk for adverse drug events (ADE) due to challenges in medication selection and dose adjustment. Morphine, while frequently used for rapid analgesia in the acute setting, poses a distinct risk in patients with an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) < 30 mL/min, as its active [...]

Background: Diagnostic delays remain a leading cause of preventable harm in hospitalized patients. Existing tools for analyzing diagnostic delays offer comprehensive guidance, however their complexity and time demands limit wider adoption. Institutional event review, peer review, and educational processes therefore often fail to elucidate upstream root causes of diagnostic delays and instead erroneously treat diagnostic [...]

Background: Peer-to-peer discussions between hospitalists can support clinician decision-making and diagnostic reasoning. However, there is no standard approach to training hospitalists to facilitate effective and collegial conversations with peers about diagnostic excellence. As a part of the Achieving Diagnostic Excellence through Prevention and Teamwork (ADEPT) study we created and piloted a novel standardized teaching model to develop hospitalists’ skills in facilitating structured discussions with peer hospitalists whose patients experienced a rapid response. We recruited 52 hospitalists from the 13-hospital ADEPT Collaborative to participate in [...]

Background: Transitions of care from the inpatient to outpatient setting are a vulnerable period for patients, particularly when diagnostic results are not finalized until after discharge (1). Hospitalists may not be available to review results promptly, assuming outpatient providers will follow up on pending results. (2,3,4) Lack of clarity about who is following the result [...]

Background: As a burgeoning subspecialty, pediatric hospital medicine (PHM) has become a career path for many physicians. Whether working in a community hospital or an academic medical center, many pediatric hospitalists hold faculty appointments with a university or medical school. For hospitalists with faculty status, academic promotion recognizes an individual’s contributions in the field, serves [...]