Background: The Society of Hospital Medicine’s Choosing Wisely guidelines recommend regular assessment of inpatients’ need for urinary catheters and telemetry monitoring. Since studies suggest clinicians are not aware which patients have an indwelling catheter or are on telemetry, we aimed to use the electronic patient list to improve cognitive awareness of unnecessary urinary catheters and [...]

Background : As part of the Choosing Wisely campaign, the Society of Hospital Medicine recommends against performing “repetitive complete blood count [CBC] and chemistry testing in the face of clinical and lab stability.” This recommendation stems from a body of research that shows that frequent or excessive phlebotomy can have negative consequences, including iatrogenic anemia, increased [...]

Background: Inappropriate laboratory utilization in hospitalized patients is a significant contributing factor to health care expenditures, iatrogenic anemia, downstream testing, and poor patient satisfaction. For these reasons, the Society of Hospital Medicine has recommended through the Choosing Wisely Campaign to avoid repetitive complete blood counts (CBC) and chemistry testing in the face of clinical stability. [...]

Background: The Choosing Wisely campaign was launched in 2012 with a goal of “advancing a national dialogue on avoiding wasteful or unnecessary medical tests, treatments, and procedures.[1] ”  The Society of Hospital Medicine published 5 recommendations for Adult Hospital Medicine in 2013[2] , including one that advised against performing repetitive complete blood count (CBC) and [...]

Background: As part of the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely campaign the Society of Hospital Medicine recommended providers avoid performing repetitive CBC and chemistry testing in the face of clinical and lab stability. In 2014 as part of an EMR upgrade our institution removed the “daily labs” order. A 1-year post change audit showed no change [...]