Background: Although inpatient admissions to hospitals appear to be a random process, identifying and understanding any underlying patterns and drivers could have a significant impact on medical staffing and organizational planning. Methods: The number of daily admissions to the medical service of an academic medical center was analyzed using the wavelet transform, a method of […]

Background: Duty‐hour limitations have increased the number of handoffs of patient responsibility in academic medical centers, raising concerns about discontinuity of care and patient safety (Charap, Annals of Internal Medicine, 2004). Fourth‐year medical students perform the duties of interns, which include transferring patient care responsibilities. We sought to develop and teach a structured, standard method […]

Background: Medication nonadherence is a risk factor for poor clinical outcomes among cardiac patients. Using a randomized, controlled clinical trial, we developed and evaluated a low‐literacy picture‐ and icon‐based discharge medication education tool for teaching patients about their medications at the time of hospital discharge. Methods: We developed a prototype of a printable outpatient medication […]

Background: Medical emergency teams (METs) have been developed to meet the growing needs of unstable hospitalized patients. The benefits of medical emergency teams have been reported as inconsistent in the literature, but METs may decrease length of stay, mortality, and unexpected ICU transfers. Methods: A retrospective analysis was done to evaluate the effects of a […]

Background: When elderly patients are discharged home following an acute hospitalization, they are at high risk of having an unsuccessful transition with untoward health care outcomes. We developed an interdisciplinary, comprehensive intervention to try to make this transfer of a higher quality and less dangerous. In addition to enhancing satisfaction with the discharge, we hoped […]

Background: Hospitalized medical patients with defined VTE risk factors are at high risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) in the absence of VTE prophylaxis. As national quality initiatives are implemented in the United States to improve current suboptimal VTE prophylaxis practices, it is important for both hospitals and payers to appraise the relative costs of each […]

Background: Heart failure (HF) is the diagnosis responsible for the most hospital readmissions nationally. Our health system has set a performance goal of reducing all 30‐day readmissions for patients insured by Humana to fewer than 16%. This abstract outlines the early stages of a comprehensive HF disease management program focused on readmission reduction. Methods: We […]

Background: TGC, a first‐in‐class glycylcycline approved for treating complicated skin, skin structure, and intra‐abdominal infections, has an expanded spectrum of activity against gram‐positive, gram‐negative, anaerobic, and atypical bacteria, including some resistant strains. The primary objective of the study was to compare tigecycline (TGC) efficacy and safety with levofloxacin (LEV) in patients with community‐acquired pneumonia (CAP). […]

Background: Different hospitalist staffing models provide different levels of inpatient continuity of care. There has been increasing discussion about the impact of discontinuity of care on length of stay (LOS) and other utilization and quality metrics. The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of continuity of hospitalist staffing patterns on acute care […]

Background: Teamwork is essential for optimizing quality of care and safety of hospitalized patients. As part of the medical team, nurses play an important role in the care of patients and are well positioned to detect acute cardiac conditions. Although nurses regularly perform cardiac assessments of their patients, no study to date has assessed their […]