Background: Joint physician-nurse rounding is an important best practice that facilitates communication and patient participation in their care while improving outcomes and satisfaction. Interdisciplinary bedside rounding has been shown to reduce mortality, lengths of stay, medication errors, and readmissions while improving staff engagement, teamwork, and patient experience (1, 2, 3). In 2018, our hospital added [...]

Background: To date, there are limited reports around the use of well-designed information technology tools to enhance throughput communication during interdisciplinary rounds (IDRs). In collaboration with our technology innovations center, we developed a Microsoft Teams IDR tool known as “NORA.” NORA is an automated process-oriented tool designed to extract patient summary information from electronic health [...]

Background: Effective communication between the inpatient care team, patients and their families is an integral part of high quality, safe care while inpatient and during transitions of care. Collaborative, highly functioning interdisciplinary teams can impact the perception of that care by the patient and family. A multidisciplinary team at Utah Valley Hospital piloted an accountable [...]

Background: Communication between Hospital Medicine physician teams and interdisciplinary care providers (e.g. nurses, physical and occupational therapists, case managers) regarding disposition planning is often inconsistent, potentially delaying care and resulting in poor patient and provider experience. Prior studies demonstrate that sharing the estimated discharge date (EDD) early in a patient’s hospitalization can improve communication and [...]

Background: Studies show that nurses and physicians often have different perceptions of the quality of interprofessional communication. An important part of daily communication between physicians and nurses involves patients’ clinical plan of care for each day (‘care plan’). We conducted a study examining hospitalist and nurse perceptions of communication of shared patient care plans. Methods: [...]

Background: Interdisciplinary rounds are an important part of care coordination on medical units and on teaching units they usually are resident-led. After restructuring interdisciplinary rounds in our institution, we began including attending physicians, with the goal to improve care coordination, discharge planning and team communication. Methods: The intervention was conducted on a 35-bed medical teaching [...]

Background: Interdisciplinary Rounds (IDRs) are essential for coordinating patient care on hospital units within the two acute care hospitals of St. Peter’s Health Partners located in Albany, New York (a 440-bed tertiary care hospital and a 160-bed hospital). However, with a length of stay O:E ratio as high as 1.34, we were concerned that not [...]

Background: Interprofessional Plan of Care Rounds (POCR) are an organized assembly of the following health care team members: physicians, nursing, case management, social work, physical therapy, pharmacy, and other ancillary services (Terra, 2015). The purpose of the rounds is for the group to concisely review each patient, his or her goals for the day, discharge [...]

Background: Effective doctor-patient communication is crucial for the exchange of important information. Improved communication can positively influence patient satisfaction, adherence and ultimately can lead to improvement in health outcomes.Patient satisfaction scores in the inpatient setting are elicited using the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. Effective communication between a physician and [...]

Background: Throughput is a hospital priority. Decreasing length of stay is essential to decongesting overcrowded hospitals and maintaining financial viability. Purpose: The purpose of the project was to improve throughput through enhanced interdisciplinary communication. Description: We used the LEAN methodology of process improvement to perform a Value Stream Mapping exercise, which brought diverse clinical staff [...]