Background: Timely identification and treatment are integral to sepsis management in emergency department (ED) and inpatient settings. Increasingly, automated alerts embedded in electronic health records (EHRs) are used to expedite sepsis detection but may lead to false alarms and increased alarm fatigue. Additionally, recent data have demonstrated that the EPIC Sepsis Model—a proprietary sepsis alert […]

Background: Intubation is both an important outcome measure along the spectrum of all respiratory illnesses and a marker of disease severity. Time of intubation (TOI) is an important point to identify in the electronic health record (EHR) as it allows researchers to study the association of pre and post-intubation variables with mortality and other relevant […]

Background: Hospital throughput and length of stay (LOS) are important drivers of success in an increasingly competitive healthcare landscape where revenues are down and demand can exceed hospital capacity. More specifically, longer LOS and hospital throughput bottlenecks impact access to timely care, the quality and safety of care delivery, patient and family satisfaction, and provider […]

Case Presentation: A 53 year old male Missouri resident with a prior history of intravenous drug use, traumatic subdural hematoma, seizure disorder and a diagnosis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) / acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in 1990 presented to his local hospital in April with a 1 day history of fever and confusion. He was […]

Background: In Hospital Medicine, triaging a patient is the process of evaluating an admitted patient and assigning the patient to an appropriate service. Triaging patients is a manual and challenging process which burdens Hospitalists. As with any manual process, there is an inherent risk of missed steps, and in the case of patient triage, the […]