Background: Communication between team members is fundamental to providing high quality care to hospitalized patients (1). Breakdowns in communication lead to compromised patient safety, delays in care, and poor utilization of resources (2). Our Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital has about 200 inpatient beds, primarily staffed by resident physician teams. Bedside nurses use the admission order [...]

Background: Improving the quality and safety of the care provided is the some of the most essential and critical work done in hospitals today. In the current system of health care education, health care professionals are often trained on improvement methodology. Several methodologies are provided as improvement frameworks in our health care professional schools around [...]

Background: As the prevalence of patients admitted with a diagnosis of acute decompensated heart failure rises, hospitalists are at the forefront of delivering care for this complex patient population. Heart failure (HF) exacerbations are one of the leading causes of hospitalizations with high rates of readmissions and associated mortality. Evidence based studies show that optimizing [...]

Background: Hospitals continue to experience pressures to optimize efficiency and quality outcomes and to reduce practice variation. In surgical patient populations, the Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) pathways have been shown to reduce length of stay, postoperative complications, hospital readmissions, and cost by integrating multidisciplinary, evidence-based interventions throughout the perioperative period (1). A similar model [...]