Background: Effective discharge education is important to help patients understand their medications and follow up appointments, thereby improving adherence and reducing risk of readmissions. Our institution’s electronic medical record has a standard After Visit Summary (AVS) that is utilized by nursing staff to educate patients on the discharge care plan and then given to patients [...]

Background: Malnutrition is a significant indicator for illness severity and expected mortality. Prior to any process improvement interventions in 2014, only 4.7% of UNMH inpatients were diagnosed with malnutrition at discharge, much lower than the published national inpatient prevalence of 20-50%. Given the relatively high level of poverty in NM, we believe these lower rates [...]

Background: Admitted patients with Type II Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) are often placed on sliding scale insulin with four fingerstick blood glucose (FSBG) tests per day, regardless of home insulin use or baseline glycemic control. FSBG testing in the inpatient setting allows for real-time insulin adjustment to protect patients from significant hypo- or hyperglycemia, but FSBG [...]

Background: Compared to ten other high-income countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the US spent nearly twice as much on healthcare. Yet, compared to these countries, the US has the lowest life expectancy. This disparity will worsen as the US’s national healthcare expenditures rise from $4.1 trillion in 2020 to a [...]

Background: Hospital-acquired delirium induced via disruptions of the sleep cycle contributes to increased mortality and morbidity in hospitalized patients (1,2). Surveys of hospitalized general internal medicine patients at our institution, a tertiary academic medical center, have found that sleep duration is decreased in the hospital, with inpatients sleeping on average 4-6 hours, and reporting worse [...]

Background: Lost or improperly labeled specimens may be medically detrimental to patients and have legal implications for the medical professionals and healthcare facility involved. Endoscopy is an especially high-risk location for specimen errors given the large number of biopsies obtained and the high volume of patients served daily by the same team. A 61-year-old male [...]

Background: The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation developed the Choosing Wisely project in 2012 as a way to identify commonly used tests that may be overused or inappropriately used. The Society of Hospital Medicine created a subcommittee in this project focused on recommendations affecting hospitalists, and made the recommendation in 2013 to stop [...]

Background: While hospitalists pursue a primarily clinical role, we have carved a niche in clinical research, particularly Quality Improvement based research. However, clinical research often involves time intensive chart review, which can become a barrier to hospitalists with heavy clinical roles. A mechanism to mitigate this will be revolutionary. Purpose: In this innovations abstract, we [...]