Background: Discharge from the hospital is a critical transition point in patient care. This transition is a vulnerable time for patients, with many experiencing medical error and adverse events after discharge. Improving patient safety during this transition from the in‐patient to outpatient setting involves multiple processes including insuring appropriate and early follow‐up for patients at [...]

Background: Emphasis is shifting from the simple justification of hospital medicine to identifying/implementing steps enabling it to move more solidly into academia. Establishing a robust fundable research base — allowing for diversity in funding and career paths — is essential for successful growth. Purpose: To describe an innovative program to accelerate research capacity building in [...]

Background: Continuing medical education is important not merely for the maintenance of certification but also for the ongoing growth and development of clinicians. This may be particularly relevant in the field of hospital medicine, where the median experience level is 3 years. Optimal methods of continuing education and clinical development have yet to be determined [...]

Background: Improved methods for training medical residents on common procedures offer the possibility of minimizing complications. Currently residents are often trained to perform procedures such as central venous catheter (CVC) placement on real patients in neither a rigorous nor a standardized manner. There is also frequently no clear measure for competency of CVC placement. Purpose: [...]

Background: The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) introduced a National Patient Safety Goal that states hospitals should “implement a standardized approach to ‘handoff’ communications, including an opportunity to ask and respond to questions.” Few studies on the safety or efficacy of current patient handoff systems exist, and few standardized electronic medical record [...]

Background: Communication is central to the coordination of quality patient care. Yet studies have documented poor communication among physicians and have associated poor communication with serious adverse outcomes. A recent meta‐analysis revealed that direct communication between hospitals and primary care physicians (PCPs) occurs infrequently (3%‐20%). The availability of a discharge summary at the first postdischarge [...]

Background: All too often the transition of patient care from the inpatient to the outpatient setting is a dilemma. Our hospital administration recognized this issue and developed a community case management program (CCMP). The staff hospitalists collaborated with the CCMP to identify at‐risk patients in order to provide needed resources, increased access to services, and [...]

Background: When the 80‐hour restriction took effect nationwide, surgical trainees' time outside the operating room became inadequate to optimally manage complex patients in the perioperative period. A busy neuroscience facility specializing in treatment of arteriovenous malformations, brain tumors and intracranial hemorrhages was interested in improving the quality of care provided to its patients. A neurointensivist [...]

Background: On July 1, 2007, the CMS launched the Physicians Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) as a voluntary pay‐for‐reporting program to reward individual physicians for providing quality care based on 74 performance measures. The program calls for a bonus of up to 1.5% of total allowed charges for the Medicare physician fee schedule with claims‐based reporting [...]

Background: Hospitalists are increasingly expected to improve patient outcomes while maintaining a high level of efficiency. In addition, attaining high levels of patient and employee satisfaction is critical to a hospital's mission. Creating a research and development clinical unit can help hospitals pilot different initiatives to achieve these goals and better utilize hospitalists as a [...]