Background: Congestive heart failure (CHF) is the leading hospital admission diagnosis for patients over 65. It carries with it a significant toll on the quality of life and mortality of the patients diagnosed with it. There is a tremendous economic burden on the health care system as well, with an estimated $34.8 billion dollars in [...]

Background: In the internal medicine clerkship, students are required by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) to see patients with each of the conditions that the clerkship director identifies as core to the clerkship curriculum. However, clerkship directors are dependent on the flow of patients into hospitals and clinics, and shorter lengths of stay [...]

Background: Hospitalized patients with diabetes or hyperglycemia are typically monitored through finger‐stick glucose checks 4 times a day. Intermittent monitoring of blood glucose can miss many glucose excursions, particularly in the postprandial and nocturnal periods. Purpose: The introduction of continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) is potentially a new method to treat hyperglycemia in the inpatient setting. [...]

Background: The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report released in 1999 estimated between 44,000 and 98,000 inpatient hospital deaths resulted from medical errors within the United States annually. Although we have made advances during the past decade to reduce medical error through our understanding of human factors engineering (HFE), development of technology {e.g., electronic orders/chart documentation), [...]

Background: The discharge process is increasingly being studied as an area of quality improvement. Patients can inadvertently be discharged home with critical laboratory values or abnormal trends because of cognitive or non‐cognitive errors. Previous studies have shown that abnormal laboratory tests in the clinic and the hospital can also be lost to follow‐up, resulting in [...]

Background: Current research supports the fact that early recognition of vital sign deterioration provides the opportunity for early intervention and subsequent reduction of cardiac and respiratory arrest risk for non‐ICU patients. MEWS, or Modified Early Warning Score, is a physiological scoring system that assigns risk for clinical deterioration based on vital signs and clinical observation. [...]

Background: Pediatric hospital medicine is a rapidly growing field. The growth occurring at academic institutions reflects a rise in the number of pediatricians who are choosing careers in academic pediatric hospital medicine. As this number of junior faculty grows, so does the need for mentoring. In academic medicine, mentorship has resulted in increased productivity, grant [...]

Background: Creating a culture of safety to support clinicians and improve the quality of patient care is a goal for nearly all health care organizations. However, it can be difficult to envision specific efforts that can directly influence organizational culture. To promote transparency and reinforce a nonpunitive attitude throughout the organization, we have created a [...]

Background: The discharge process is consistently rated among the lowest components of patient satisfaction markers in surveys. Discharge delays and late discharges can also negatively affect throughput by preventing bed availability for new admissions. Barriers include late family pickup times, unanticipated discharge delays, physician lag in discharges, discharge order entry delays, and poor care team [...]

Background: Starting in October 2008, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) mandated no longer paying for treatment costs of certain conditions deemed preventable unless documentation and coding reflecting that those conditions were present on admission (POA). Hospitals nationwide are tackling with these mandates. The areas under consideration currently include surgical site infections, catheter‐associated [...]