Background: Pain remains a major concern for medically hospitalized adults, and pain treatment is a focus of hospital quality reporting and improvement efforts. Pharmacologic treatment during hospitalization for acute pain and cancer pain rest on some evidence, but as many as 1 in 3 adult medical inpatients suffer from chronic pain. Little is known about [...]

Background: Correct inhaler technique for COPD medications is essential to achieving optimum delivery into the lungs. Evidence suggests that poor technique is widespread and linked to poor efficacy and adherence. However, the direct relationship between inhaler technique and health status has not been investigated.  Methods: Data from a 2013 US survey dataset of COPD patients [...]

Background: The need to improve patient satisfaction (or patient experience) is increasing dramatically. Patient satisfaction is not only a direct indicator of quality of care but it is also an important component of pay for performance metrics. We started a standardized process of admitting patients by developing dedicated admission teams called Patient Centered Admission Teams [...]

Background:   The overall national patient satisfaction scores have improved since the HCAHPS reporting began. However, it is unknown whether the improvement trends are different between teaching and non-teaching hospitals. Therefore, our objective was to compare long-term changes in patient satisfaction between teaching and non-teaching hospitals. Methods:   We used three datasets; HCAHPS data (2008 [...]