Background: Coordination of inpatient and outpatient care is an important challenge in improving population health but evidence examining the effectiveness of existing care coordination programs is mixed. The Comprehensive Care Physician (CCP) Program at the University of Chicago provides patients at increased risk of hospitalization the opportunity to receive inpatient and outpatient care from the [...]

Background: This is an exciting time for Telemedicine with new programs being implemented across the continuum of care including acute care, post-acute care, and in home settings. Proving the value of telemedicine programs when no access to providers exist is relatively straightforward but proving value of programs where implemented to augment existing care by the [...]

Background: Coordination of inpatient and outpatient care is an important challenge in improving population health but evidence examining the effectiveness of existing care coordination programs is mixed. The Comprehensive Care Physician (CCP) Program at the University of Chicago provides patients at increased risk of hospitalization the opportunity to receive inpatient and outpatient care from the [...]

Background: Coordination of inpatient and outpatient care is an important challenge in improving population health but evidence examining the effectiveness of existing care coordination programs is mixed. The Comprehensive Care Physician (CCP) Program at the University of Chicago provides patients at increased risk of hospitalization the opportunity to receive inpatient and outpatient care from the [...]

Background: Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS) is a goal-directed, bedside ultrasound examination performed by a healthcare provider to answer a specific diagnostic question or guide performance of an invasive procedure at the bedside. More hospitalists have begun to use POCUS, but little is known about current POCUS usage by hospitalists. We conducted a national survey [...]

Background: Hospital capacity constraints remain an immense concern throughout the US and has been recognized as a national crisis for greater than a decade. ER overcrowding is of particular concern due to its downstream effects. It occurs when admitted patients are boarded in the emergency room for greater than 2 hours, while inpatient beds become [...]

Background: This is an exciting time for Telemedicine with new programs being implemented across the continuum of care including acute care, post-acute care, and in home settings. Proving the value of telemedicine programs when no access to providers exist is relatively straightforward but proving value of programs where implemented to augment existing care by the [...]

Background: The United States sees over 35 million hospital discharges a year with a 20% readmission rate. Unplanned readmissions amount to 20 billion dollars annually. Efforts to prevent readmissions impact patient’s overall morbidity/mortality and alleviate the financial burden on health care systems. To that effect, the United States health care reform, under the Affordable Care [...]

Background: Patient lists and patient assignment aid hospitalists through their workflow. Lack of a standardized approach has led to various ways of patient assignment and various means to display them. With the evolution of electronic medical records and technology; patient assignment and their display theoretically should have been more straight forward however there are still [...]

Background: Recently coined the “fifth pillar to the bedside physical exam” in a 2018 JAMA article, a growing number of physicians have started incorporating point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) into their clinical assessments. Many medical schools have already started to integrate POCUS into their educational curriculum. With the emergence of more affordable handheld solutions, practicing physicians and [...]