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: Multiple recent studies have demonstrated a link between effective clinician communication and patient experience of care in the hospital. Additionally, at a time of unprecedented rates of clinician burnout, communication challenges can negatively impact hospitalist job satisfaction. Despite this, there are limited proven interventions for improving communication in hospital medicine. A low-cost, high-yield, and [...]

Background: The prevalence of gout has risen in recent decades despite advancements in therapeutic options due to several reasons, including lack of adherence to treatment guidelines by physicians and patients’ poor perception and adherence to therapy. We aim to assess the beliefs and knowledge of gout management in Internal Medicine residents, to investigate the gaps, [...]

Background: Sepsis, which is life-threatening organ dysfunction occurring in response to systemic infection, is a frequently fatal syndrome for which early recognition and treatment are paramount. While there are some reports that female and black patients with sepsis experience greater delays in time to antibiotics, there is an overall paucity of published data on whether [...]

Background: Coffee is a widely consumed beverage. Evidence suggests that coffee consumption is associated with a substantially lower risk of type 2 diabetes (1). However, there is paucity of literature on whether coffee consumption has any protective effect on people who already have diabetes. We sought to examine the association between caffeine consumption and hemoglobin [...]

Background: Patients who are frequently admitted to Medicine inpatient services comprise a distinct subset of readmitted patients about whom not much is known. A prior study collected data on characteristics of 153 frequently hospitalized patients. This was a follow-up evaluation to determine the categories of patients the original cohort belonged to, and to collect mortality [...]

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: 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 [...]

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) in hospitalized medically ill patients is a leading preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. About half of VTE events occur following discontinuation of standard-duration in-hospital prophylaxis and hospital discharge. The APEX study evaluated Betrixaban for in-hospital to home VTE prophylaxis and is the first FDA approved anticoagulant [...]