Background: Syncope is characterized by a transient loss of consciousness, with vasovagal syncope being the most common cause. According to the American College of Cardiology (1), routine cardiac imaging, including transthoracic echocardiography (TTE), is not recommended in the evaluation of syncope unless there is a clinical suspicion of a cardiac cause, based on the patient’s [...]

Background: The Bronx has the highest rate of people living with HIV among New York City boroughs, with South Bronx zip codes exceeding the statewide average by over four times. Despite this, pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) utilization in the Bronx significantly lags, with a PrEP-to-need ratio over nine times lower than Manhattan’s and four times lower [...]

Background: Concerningly, COPD exacerbations are the 3rd leading cause of readmissions nationwide, accounting for 60,000 readmissions annually. Patients hospitalized with COPD exacerbations have a 22.6% likelihood of readmission within 30 days, partially contributed to by their suboptimal disease awareness. However, there are educational tools that can be leveraged to improve treatment adherence, patient outcomes, and [...]

Background: Opioid overdose is a well-established cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States1. Naloxone is an opioid antagonist and harm-reducing treatment with a complex history of prescribing behaviors, attitudes, availability and reimbursement2. Interventions to increase appropriate co-prescription of naloxone include government mandates3 and Electronic Health Record (EHR) clinical decision support4. Our institution used [...]

Background: A 2013 Mayo Clinic initiative encouraged proactive communication between physicians and nurses by paging each to bedside for morning rounds, improving physician and nursing perceptions of teamwork. Utilizing a mobile-electronic-health-record-based alert for such a process may reduce implementation costs and feasibility barriers. Previously, we piloted an updated interprofessional bedside rounds (IBR) model that utilized [...]

Background: High inpatient team censuses are associated with poor patient outcomes, impact trainee education, and contribute to burnout. Since 2019 at the Washington DC VA Medical Center, inpatient medicine team censuses have risen and have been cited as contributing to burnout and decreased educational opportunities. A medical service team expansion was piloted with a goal [...]

Background: The opioid crisis remains a threat to public health nationwide. In NYC, there were 3,046 drug overdose deaths in 2023, a decrease of only 1% from 2022, with fentanyl involved in 80% of these fatalities. In 2021, the emergency department at our institution began distributing take-home naloxone kits to at-risk individuals on discharge through [...]

Background: Delirium, an acute neuropsychiatric syndrome marked by fluctuating disturbances in attention, cognition, and consciousness, is prevalent among older hospitalized cancer patients. The Mayo Delirium Prediction (MDP) tool, designed to predict delirium risk in older adults using electronic health record (EHR) data, may help identify individuals at increased risk, thus offering valuable insights for targeted [...]

Background: Real-Time Prescription Benefit (RTPB) tools remain underutilized by hospitalists, partly due to concerns surrounding the tools’ availability and accuracy of the co-payment estimates provided. The RTPB tool’s functionality is contingent on the patient’s pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) identification and selection in the electronic health record (EHR). This study aims to investigate the availability of [...]

Background: According to the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, 523 million (95% UI: 497 to 550 million) people worldwide had cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) in 2019, resulting in a significant increase in DALYs and years of life lost, mostly due to ischemic heart disease. There are various accurate and economical gold standard tests to identify [...]