Background:  The Society of Hospital Medicine considers stroke care to be a core competency in hospital medicine.  Hospitalists must be prepared to lead inpatient stroke alerts, as neurologists may not be readily available outside of academic medical centers.  However, even graduates of hospitalist training programs may report insufficient experience in leading these complex, time-pressured, high-stakes [...]

Background: Laboratory testing is an integral part of modern medicine with an estimated 4-5 billion tests performed in the United States each year, and accounts for 3-5% of healthcare spending. At our resident-run clinic in an underserved community, the cost of laboratory tests in 2013 was over $400,000, exceeding the government subsidy. In this study, [...]

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. [...]