Background: Specialty wards (e.g., cardiology or oncology wards) group clinically similar hospitalized patients in efforts to improve outcomes and costs. When these wards exceed capacity, subsequent patients overflow to “geographically dispersed” alternate wards. Geographic dispersion has been associated with care inefficiency and worse outcomes on specialty wards, but has not been studied in a large, [...]

Background: Sepsis is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients . Early and appropriate therapy has been shown to improve outcomes, making early diagnosis and intervention critical . However, recognition and treatment of sepsis remains a challenge . In order to understand how to best deliver sepsis treatment in different hospitals within [...]