Background: Hospital medicine is a maturing field that increasingly focuses on providing high value patient care. A key question in the value equation is how different patient census sizes impact care. Our recent research showed that higher patient censuses were associated with longer hospital length of stay and costs. This study follows up on this [...]

Background: Hospital medicine is a maturing field that increasingly focuses on providing high value patient care. A key question in the value equation is how different patient census sizes impact care. Our recent research showed that higher patient censuses were associated with longer hospital length of stay and costs. This study follows up on this [...]

Background: The number of physician assistants (PAs) who are hospitalists has rapidly expanded.  Little educational research has been done to understand what knowledge and skills PA students need in preparation for a career in hospital medicine.  We sought to identify which topics and experiences practicing hospitalists felt were most critical for PA students.  A second [...]

Background: : Low patient satisfaction can result in financial loss for hospitals, and potentially for individual physicians or groups and patient satisfaction is known to be lower on academic services.1 Increasingly, Medicare funds will be withheld from hospitals for underperformance in patient satisfaction due to Value Based Purchasing (VBP).  We identified a low performing, academic [...]

Background: The role of a hospitalist in treating nicotine withdrawal using counseling and medications during hospitalization can improve cessation rates of tobacco users. Clinical decision support and drug-condition alerts within the electronic medical record prompt the prescribing of medications for tobacco treatment and ease documentation of reimbursable counseling by physicians. Additionally, several hospitals have implemented [...]

Background: Effective patient handoffs during care transitions are crucial in the skilled nursing home setting where physician providers may not round on a daily basis, and the healthcare facility staff has shift changes on a daily basis. Currently, many critical communications regarding patients are shared via private phone calls, text messages, emails and log books. [...]

Background: By 2022 health care spending is expected to climb to 19.9% of the US GDP and is forecasted to continue rising with no end in sight[1]. The patient (or consumer) is completely detached from the reimbursement system and thus unaware of the distribution of health care dollars. The purpose of this study is to [...]