Background: Prior studies have found Black and Hispanic patients are more likely to experience disparities in pain management. Fewer studies have evaluated pain control based on age, sex, body mass index (BMI), or presence of a substance use disorder (SUD). While factors influencing management of acute pain are complex, striving for adequate pain control remains [...]

Background: Documentation of code status is critical to goal-concordant care. Historically, documentation rates have been low due to time, the sensitive nature of discussions, and lack of experience. The COVID-19 pandemic, due to the risk of rapid decompensation and in-hospital mortality, created an urgent need for documentation of code status preferences among patients admitted to [...]

Background: Obesity is associated with overall higher mortality risk in the general population however, some authors have noted patterns to suggest a survival advantage in a certain clinical subpopulation. Obesity paradox is reported for stroke, myocardial infarction, heart failure, renal disease, and diabetes. Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is the most common nosocomial infection in the [...]

Background: Multiple factors can lead to overuse of diagnostic imaging for venous thromboembolism (VTE). These include fear of missing a potentially fatal diagnosis, low predictive accuracy of clinical gestalt, prediction rules, and risk assessment models for VTE, and increased access to imaging. Diagnostic imaging for deep venous thrombosis (DVT) with doppler ultrasonography, or for pulmonary [...]

Case Presentation: A 49-year-old male with primary sclerosing cholangitis and newly diagnosed locally advanced cholangiocarcinoma was initiated on 5-Fluorouracil (FU) based chemotherapy (FOLFOX) as an outpatient (Figure 1). Within one day of receiving FOLFOX, the patient presented to the ED with acute, intermittent chest pain radiating to his left arm and shortness of breath. Vital [...]

Case Presentation: A 58-year-old-woman with no significant past medical history presented to her primary care physician with bilateral lower extremity edema. She was treated with compression stockings but returned after four months without improvement. She was diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency and referred to a vascular surgeon for a superficial venous ablation, which was ineffective. [...]

Background: Interdisciplinary communication is essential for safe and high-quality patient care. Outside of bedside rounds, paging is the most used means for communication to clinicians (physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs)). Quality improvement (QI) initiatives have aimed to improve patient safety by expanding technology and standardizing paging communications as well as to characterize what types [...]

Background: Every year, as many as 98,000 people die from medical errors within the hospital, making medical errors one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States(1). While the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) has incorporated healthcare quality and patient safety into the Clinical Learning Environment Review (CLER) program [...]

Background: The US has the most expensive healthcare system globally.1 Recent claims have raised concerns that hospitalists may be in part contributing to higher levels of high intensity billing over time through upcoding.2 However, there is little empirical evidence on this topic. As the number of hospitalists continues to grow and hospitalists disproportionately care for [...]

Background: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the hospitalist workforce, which has been at the forefront, has been further stretched in both clinical and non-clinical domains. Hospitalists have faced increased clinical workloads due to inpatient volume surges, have been asked to lead hospital administrative pandemic responses, and have had to quickly adapt research to the context [...]