Background: Rapid response teams play an important role in the care of clinically deteriorating patients. Variability in team members, setting, and activation criteria creates unique challenges to studying these teams. The complexities and inefficiencies of rapid responses due to their heterogeneity are poorly understood. Here, we explore opportunities for improved rapid response team efficiency using […]

Background: As the racial/ethnic diversity of the US population continues to increase, the proportion of patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) expands. Language barriers can pose as a significant obstacle to receiving high-quality health care and adversely affect the patient experience. Residents commonly encounter patients with LEP in the hospital setting and to a lesser […]

Background: The healthcare system needs tools that can predict which patients are at risk of deterioration, before adverse outcomes such as cardiac arrest or even death occur. Many of these patients will show signs of significant physiological deterioration in the 24 hours prior to ICU transfer or cardiac arrest [1-4]. Different scores have been developed […]

Background: Late‐afternoon discharges create admission bottlenecks in the ED. Long ED length of stay (LOS) is a major dissatisfier for patients. In addition, patients who arrive on the floor after 1 pm have a 0.6 day longer LOS than those who arrive before 1 pm. In January 2012, the 30‐day running discharge before noon (DBN) […]

Case Presentation: A 22‐year‐old sexually active female college student without chronic medical comorbidity presented with two weeks of fever, sore throat, malaise and fatigue. She subsequently developed jaundice and sought further evaluation. On admission, examination revealed a low‐grade temperature of 100.1°F. She was nontoxic‐appearing, without rash, oral lesions or significant lymphadenopathy. She was jaundiced, with […]

Background: While rapid response teams are well established for inpatient emergencies, outpatient emergency response on large medical campuses is much more variable. At our institution, this need for outpatient emergency response is particularly acute. As a tertiary referral center, cancer treatment center, and the largest transplant center in the state, our clinics provide 1.4 million […]