Background: With access to big data in medicine, it is becoming increasingly necessary to use tools to automate the pooling of data into relevant thematic structures. Topic modeling is most often used to uncover these thematic structures in large sets of textual data. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) is one such algorithm-based topic model that has [...]

Background: Sitting at the bedside improves patients’ perception of their interactions with their physicians. Despite these data, prior work shows that medicine interns sit during only 9% of observed physician-patient interactions. We aimed to assess perceived importance of and barriers to sitting at the bedside among a group of internal medicine residents. These results have [...]

Background: Understanding communication between providers and patients is key to providing patient-centered care. We sought to determine if patient’s perception of time spent by physician at bedside is associated with patient satisfaction with physician communication. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of patients admitted to the hospital medicine service. The survey included questions about patient’s [...]

Background: Physicians and nurses often overestimate patients’ understanding of their illness, medications, treatments, and care plans. Fragmented discussions can lead to inconsistent conveyance of key information to patients and their caregivers. Multidisciplinary bedside rounds are an essential opportunity to facilitate patient-centered care. Our medical-surgical units did not have a standardized approach to ensuring consistent, clear [...]

Background: In an academic center, a physician team may be comprised of medical students, interns, residents, fellows and an attending. Patients encounter multiple members from the same physician team and this often leads to confusion in regards to their individual care. It is evident that this leads to patient confusion and misunderstandings can ensue. A [...]

Background: Discharge from an in-patient hospital stay is a critical opportunity to teach patients about their medications. Communication about medications and appropriate transition of care are two domains of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey via which patients evaluate hospitals. Communication about new medications and side effects is one of [...]

Background: Hospitalists balance efficiency and quality in their daily practice. How a physician’s time management affects care quality is unknown. Accordingly, we aimed to compare the EHR efficiency of hospitalists, as measured by their time spent within the EHR per day, with quality of care, as measured by readmission rates and patient satisfaction. Methods: Data [...]

Background: Patient experience is one of the key foundations of quality care. The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Survey (HCAHPS) is the standard measurement of patient experience, and higher scores have been linked to improved clinical outcomes and reduced readmissions. Few published interventions have improved HCAHPS scores in inpatient settings. Interventions utilizing [...]