Background: Hospital Medicine groups are often called upon to lead initiatives that require access to high-quality data from their local health system. These include quality and value improvement (QI) efforts as well as health services and outcomes research. Although these efforts can be important for clinical operations as well as academic advancement, clear mechanisms to [...]

Background: Despite years of intense focus, inpatient and observation readmission rates remain high and largely unchanged. Little robust evidence exists to guide hospitals in the selection of interventions effective at reducing 30 day readmissions in real-world settings. Our local healthcare system incorporated the most recent recommendations for preventing readmissions into a comprehensive program called Transition [...]

Background: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is a lung disease characterized by chronic, irreversible airway obstruction that can precipitate into acute exacerbations (AECOPD) of cough, dyspnea and sputum production, often requiring hospitalization. Hospital systems aiming to improve outcomes for patients with AECOPD are testing innovative approaches to care in the acute care setting. To enroll [...]

Background: Sepsis research is limited by heterogeneity and inaccuracy of patient identification. An ideal identification algorithm would broadly define a population with suspected infection to optimize discrimination and provide real-time identification of high-risk populations for potential interventions. We combined clinical and administrative to identify a population of adults hospitalized with suspected infection and examined characteristics [...]

Background: The US healthcare system is under increasing pressure to improve value and affordability. Acute care is responsible for a large proportion of overall health costs, but the complexities and pace in this environment have left an evidence gap in value-based care transformation. Novel improvement and evaluation strategies are thus needed more than ever to [...]