Background: The challenges of medication reconciliation at hospital admission and discharge are well recognized, and best practices remain to be fully defined. The accuracy of the preadmission medication list (PAML) may be compromised by patient factors as well as time constraints on the admitting clinicians. At hospital discharge, suboptimal patient education may cause adverse drug [...]

Background: Despite published inpatient hyperglycemia treatment guidelines, most hospitals have not yet adopted them. In our hospital 50% of inpatients have diabetes, and neither uniform hypoglycemia treatment nor insulin protocol was available on the computerized electronic medical record. Purpose: To improve the treatment of diabetes in our hospital and receive Joint Commission Disease‐Specific Care Certification [...]

Background: Preventable rehospitalizations are disconcerting for patients, contribute to high health care costs, and are partly due to deficiencies in patients’ ability to execute the posthospital care plan. Effective patient and family care‐giver engagement and education can improve patients’ ability to carry out the posthospital care plan and may help to reduce preventable rehospitalizations. We [...]

Background: The transition from hospital to home is critical for patients, especially for those with a complicated medication regimen. Patients often report problems understanding and using the traditional medication discharge list. The authors created a pillbox medication discharge list that uses a pillbox format familiar to patients. Purpose: To decrease medication errors and increase understanding [...]

Background: Telemetry use has escalated in hospitals in general, causing some unexpected problems including a tethering effect for patients, with reduction of ambulation, potential for increased falls, and even a potential for increased length of hospitalization. There is an unrealistic belief that patients on heart monitors are safer. A survey of nursing staff at the [...]

Background: Hospitalist groups face increasing pressure to substantiate quality and efficiency of care through performance data. Academic groups are expected to advance the field through scholarly work and provide quality education to students and house staff. A common challenge is balancing performance in each of these key areas. The Balanced Scorecard (BSC) was introduced in [...]

Background: The Institute for Healthcare Improvement recommends that any unplanned readmission within 30 days of discharge prompt a formal case review to identify systematic flaws in discharge processes. Residency programs are also being charged to engage house staff in quality improvement (QI) programs in order to improve knowledge and skills in systems‐based practice (SBP). Purpose: [...]

Background: The failure of recent generations of physicians to be proficient in physical diagnosis is well known in the medical community, and recently even the mainstream media have taken to reporting on the problem. However, the medical literature does not offer guidance to programs interested in improving the education of physical diagnosis. Purpose: To describe [...]

Background: In many health care settings providers are given regular performance feedback via data dashboards, and financial incentives are often tied to these data. Although this structure is now commonplace for physicians and an important tool for improving quality, its use with house staff has been less well described. House officers are frontline providers who [...]

Background: An untapped mutualism between house staff and hospitalists exists in academic teaching hospitals. On the one hand, many hospitalists struggle to conduct meaningful research without needed funding for research assistants. On the other hand, house staff program directors struggle to facilitate scholarly activity and thereby fulfill the requirements of the Accreditation Council of Graduate [...]