Background: Approximately 40% of medical patients are discharged with tests pending, and these test results change patient care over one third of the time. Little is known, however, about what types of tests are pending at the time of discharge. Our aim, therefore, was to categorize the types of tests pending at discharge, as well [...]

Background: Hospitalists frequently participate in the perioperative care of hip fracture patients. Hip fracture repairs in the elderly carry high rales of postoperative morbidity, including heart failure and other adverse cardiac events. Heart failure also contributes to longer hospitalizations in hip fracture patients. The preoperative factors that predict postoperative heart failure remain unclear. This study [...]

Background: It is estimated that 7%–15% of all strokes occur in the hospital. It might be expected that strokes occurring in the inpatient setting would receive higher quality of care, more rapid evaluation, and a better chance for treatment than those that happen outside the hospital. However evidence from prior research indicates significant in‐hospital evaluation [...]

Background: A 2‐year quality improvement campaign at a single teaching hospital was launched to improve the identification, documentation, and treatment of pressure ulcers (PUs) in the wake of the CMS declaration that severe hospital‐acquired PUs are never events. This study evaluates the campaign's impact on the proportion of PUs documented using stage, size, and location. [...]

Background: Learning to write inpatient notes is an integral part of the internal medicine (IM) clerkship. Anecdotal evidence suggests variation in students' assessment/plan (A/P) sections; students tend to follow either a system‐based or problem‐based A/P format. Educational commentators have written about the value of writing notes in a problem‐based format as a tool for teaching [...]

Background: Patients undergoing hip replacement surgery are at particularly high risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and require thromboprophylaxis. Unlike clinical trials, real‐world surgery includes patient populations with comorbidities or on concomitant drugs, who may require alteration of standard anticoagulant regimens. Our objective was to evaluate the proportion of special patient groups present within the real‐world [...]

Background: Federal regulations require health care organizations to provide language services for limited English proficiency (LEP) patients. The National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS standards) in Health Care include 4 that outline what it means to provide adequate linguistic access services to LEP patients as prescribed in Title VI of the Civil [...]

Background: Rehospitalizations are costly and can be disruptive for patient cane. To our knowledge, no study has examined the impact of patient agreement with recommendations for the place of discharge as a cause of rehospitalization. Purpose: Our hypothesis was that for frail, hospitalized elderly adults, disagreement between patients and the clinical team's recommended place of [...]

Background: For the last 20 years, efforts have focused an improving survival from out‐of‐hospital cardiac arrest and multiorgan failure. Given the many known nephrotoxic insults of postresuscitation care, it is a common belief that renal function is a contributor to mortality and morbidity postresuscitation; however, this has been poorly studied. The focus of this study [...]

Background: Obesity has been associated with increased morbidity and mortality. In addition to that it has been noted to increase the duration of hospital stay and also readmissions for overall admissions. We wanted to find out if obesity was associated with longer duration of stay with a particular patient diagnosis of pneumonia. Methods: It was [...]