Background: Although point-of-care ultrasound can improve patient care and reduce unnecessary downstream costs, few economic models exist on hospitalist use and whether remuneration for imaging could offset equipment costs.  As the heart and lungs are commonly examined during admission, we observed the frequency of use and projected fiscal outcomes of point-of-care cardiac ultrasound by an [...]

Background: Most academic general medical services cover patients across several different care units in the hospital. Studies have shown that de-regionalized care leads to a lack of team cohesion and poor communication between healthcare providers. Prior studies have shown that teamwork improves patient outcomes and increases health care worker satisfaction. However, little information using validated [...]

Background: Effective and timely communication among caregivers is one of the 2016 Hospital National Patient Safety Goals set forth by the Joint Commission. The pager messaging system remains predominant in the U.S health care system, but is this one-way pager device falling out of favor over smart phones in the health care setting? There is [...]

Background: SHM Key Characteristic 9.1 on patient centered care encourages using guidelines/checklists to reinforce effective communication. Focused practice performance evaluations (FPPE) are a required regulatory hospital process for new medical staff members. In cognitive specialties, such as hospital medicine, completing an objective assessment of clinical skills can be difficult, with most initial evaluations based on [...]

Background: Cardiac arrest on the wards may be preceded by unmet palliative care needs, including advance care planning and specialty palliative consultation that can seek to align patients’ prognoses and goals for care. Identification of hospitalized patients with limited life expectancy allows for the delivery of appropriate palliative interventions. However, the prognosis on admission of [...]

Background: Understanding of the Do-Not-Resuscitate (DNR) order varies among different ethnic backgrounds. In Korea, the concept of DNR is not well-known. We therefore conducted a questionnaire-based study to explore and characterize ethnic differences (Korean vs. Non-Korean) in the understanding of DNR.   Methods: Subjects were recruited from the Englewood Hospital and Medical Center where is [...]

Background: Improving hospital throughput is a barrier facing medical facilities.  Poor throughput leads to prolonged patient wait times for beds, a cause of patient complaints.  Often these wait times are the result of late discharge times for admitted patients.  One focus of multidisciplinary rounds is early discharge, hoping to get admitted patients to their beds [...]

Background: Substantial portions of hospitalized patients in the United States do not understand their plan of care. Hospitalized patients’ knowledge of their plan of care affects their ability to provide truly informed consent and assent to inpatient treatment, and to assume their medical care after discharge. There is a need for further study of the [...]

Background:  The rapidly changing and increasingly complex hospitalist work environment has placed new focus on provider burnout and resilience. As hospitalist leaders seek tools to address these issues, the design thinking process offers a novel user-centered approach. Initially developed in the tech industry, design thinking moves quickly and iteratively through five stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and [...]

Background: Due to low cost, dependability, and familiarity, one-way alphanumeric paging continues to be a commonly used method of in-hospital communication. However, lack of urgency indicators has been cited as a key limitation. To address this issue, an Interdisciplinary Communication Improvement Taskforce (In-CITe) at an academic medical institution adopted a Priority Structured Paging (PSP) system [...]