Background: Like all large academic medical centers (AMCs), we face capacity challenges. On most days, bed occupancy is often greater than 90% and long boarding times in the Emergency Department (ED) leads to poor patient experience, care delays and risk for adverse outcomes. While many AMCs have approached this problem by acquiring new facilities or [...]

Background: Like all large academic medical centers (AMCs), we face capacity challenges. On most days, bed occupancy is often greater than 90% and long boarding times in the Emergency Department (ED) leads to poor patient experience, care delays and risk for adverse outcomes. While many AMCs have approached this problem by acquiring new facilities or [...]

Background: Studies regarding patient comprehension have mainly focused on discharge instructions and information, and few studies are available on patients’ comprehension of their treatment while hospitalized. The standards for patient-centered communication by The Joint Commission and the New York State Patients’ Bill of Rights, state that patients should be informed participants in their own health [...]

Background: Academic hospitalists aspire to be highly effective teachers and must demonstrate excellence in teaching to be promoted. Internal Medicine (IM) residency programs increasingly rely on such hospitalists to supervise residents when they are on inpatient service. Accordingly, outstanding resident teaching and evaluations are imperative to the advancement of academic hospitalists and the success of [...]

Background: While prescription opioids have a role in treating certain pain conditions, their injudicious use has led to an epidemic with myriad adverse outcomes. We sought to evaluate the association of socioeconomic and racial disparities with healthcare utilization and outcomes in opioid overdose related hospitalizations using National Inpatient Sample (NIS) database from 2012 through 2014. [...]

Background: Patients hospitalized with hematologic malignancy are particularly vulnerable to infection. Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) has become the most common cause of healthcare-associated infections in U. S. hospitals, and the excess healthcare costs related to CDI are estimated to be as much as 4. 8 billion dollars for acute care facilities alone. We sought to [...]

Background: Endovascular cardiac valve replacement continues to increase in popularity as it becomes more of a standard of care for valve replacements. As the number of ECVR grows each year, complications associated with these procedures may elevate the cost and limit the viability of these procedures in healthcare systems. Hospitalists need to be aware of [...]

Background: The first 24 hours of a patient’s hospitalization is a vulnerable time period, with many aspects of care occurring at a time when patients are at their highest levels of medical acuity. Compounding this, delays in care during the transition from the ED to an inpatient level of care could result in potentially avoidable [...]

Background: Hyperglycemia in hospitalized patients is well-known to be associated with adverse outcomes, such as infectious complications, increased length of stay, and increased mortality. To that effect, aggressive treatment of inpatient hyperglycemia has been shown to improve outcomes in both Medicine units and MICU. This study aimed to identify the number of patients experiencing persistent [...]

Background: Veterans in care at Veterans Affairs (VA) medical centers have a higher prevalence of Hepatitis C (HCV) antibody positivity than the general population1,2. Despite high tolerability and cure rates approaching 95% with new direct-acting antiviral (DAA) drugs, a significant proportion of veterans have not been initiated on treatment due to barriers including active substance [...]