Background: Acute heart failure (AHF) is the major cause of hospital admission and death. Furthermore, patients admitted with AHF have high readmission rates and  postdischarge mortality. Although there have been some reports, which demonstrated the predictive factors of death among patients of acute heart failure in the USA and Europe, there has been no studies [...]

Background:   Congestive heart failure (CHF) and pneumonia are amongst the leading causes of hospitalization in the United States.  Although a growing number of hospitals use both teaching and nonteaching hospitalist services for patient care, the differences in clinical outcomes and efficiency between these two services is not clearly known. The aim of this study [...]

Background: Evidence suggests that risk of central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) between patients with traditional central venous catheters (CVC) vs. peripherally inserted central catheters (PICC) is similar. However, how best to predict CLABSI in patients with PICCs is not known.  Methods: We used data from the Michigan Hospital Medicine Safety (HMS) Consortium, a 51-hospital Blue [...]

Background: Recent guidelines include aspirin as an option to prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE) in selected patients undergoing hip or knee replacement surgery. However, the efficacy of aspirin after arthroplasty has not been well-defined, particularly in more contemporary patient populations. Objective: To compare rates of post-operative VTE between patients who received aspirin-only versus anticoagulants after hip [...]

Background: The UCLA Department of Medicine (DOM) Rapid Mortality Review (RMR) is an innovative in-person, near real-time review of all deaths to capture the unique insight of the care providers into aspects of end-of-life care quality that otherwise go undocumented and unreported. The purpose of this study is to examine characteristics of mortality cases that [...]

Background: As of 2016, there are approximately 36.7 million people living with HIV around the world. HIV infection is associated with tremendous psychological burden. Improvements in coping methods would be highly beneficial in this scenario. Crucial to this would be a high Coping Self-Efficacy (CSE). Defined as a “belief about one’s ability to perform specific [...]

Background: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) started penalizing hospitals with “excess” 30-day readmissions, as determined by observed-to-expected ratio, for patients discharged after treatment for an acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD). An understanding of modifiable determinants of 30-day readmission will likely help in developing interventions to reduce preventable AECOPD readmissions. [...]

Background: Results from the recent SPRINT trial demonstrate lower rates of fatal and non-fatal major cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality in non-diabetics at high cardiovascular risk with intensive versus standard treatment, i.e., less than 120 versus less than 140 mmHg systolic, respectively. However, the long-term outcomes remain unknown.Methods: A validated state-transition model with multivariate risk [...]

Background: The randomized controlled ANZ-STATInS trial demonstrated that de novo statin use did not alter interleukin-6 levels or Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score in of what before SEPSIS-3 was known as severe sepsis. Prospective observational studies indicate that prior statin use sepsis is associated with a decreased rate of severe sepsis. We aimed to [...]

Background: Although diagnostic errors are common in hospitals, little is known about the resulting economic burden. Whether the increasing attention to patient safety has led to a decrease in diagnostic error-related claims and cost over time is also unknown. Using a publicly available dataset, we examined incidence costs and outcomes associated with diagnostic errors in [...]