Background: Despite evidence that the use of medications for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) leads to reduced mortality and improved engagement in outpatient addiction treatment, these life-saving medications are underutilized in the hospital setting. This study reports the outcomes of a hospitalist-led interprofessional and multidisciplinary inpatient program, known as the B-Team (buprenorphine team), to [...]

Background: For hospitalists rounding on inpatient units, admitting new patients at varying times through the day greatly disrupts workflow efficiency. Deferring these admissions to the next shift can result in delays in patient care. Admitting teams dedicated to the needs of new patients offer a potential solution. Methods: A quality improvement project was conducted on [...]

Background: Admissions from the Emergency Department (ED) to the inpatient floor units are often inefficient; this translates to increased expense via increased length of stay (LOS), fewer available patient rooms via “patient boarding”, and an overall less positive experience for patients and their families. Reducing admission times effectively increases the capacity of the ED and [...]

Background: Maintenance intravenous fluids (IVFs) are a critical treatment utilized frequently in pediatric medicine to support children with impaired enteral intake suffering from a wide variety of illnesses. Traditional pediatric practice of utilizing hypotonic fluids is thought to derive from Holiday and Seger’s mathematical calculations on IVFs that concluded that the use of hypotonic fluids [...]

Background: Clinical decision making pathways (pathways) embedded within electronic medical record (EMR) systems are an innovative tool intended to assist providers in diagnosing and managing patient conditions. Pathways provide clinical decision trees with the ability access online risk score calculators and select orders for lab and imaging tests, medications, and consultations. Studies have shown that [...]

Background: Thrombotic disorders, such as venous thromboembolism (VTE) and ischemic stroke are highly prevalent conditions. In many cases, an underlying inciting risk factor is clearly visible that can explain the thrombotic event. When a clear explanation is not found, diagnoses such as “idiopathic VTE” and “cryptogenic stroke” are made. Except when there is a concern [...]

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality for hospitalized patients. There are approximately 900,000 new VTE events and 100,000 VTE-related deaths every year. In the United States, more deaths occur due to VTE than breast cancer, AIDS, and motor vehicle accidents combined. VTE are considered preventable events with appropriate prophylaxis; [...]

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) poses a significant risk to patients in the hospital setting, and studies have shown that VTE prophylaxis should be incorporated into the management of high-risk patients during their hospital stay. However, many of these patients are still high-risk for VTE at the time of discharge and for up to three months [...]

Background: The use of early warning systems (EWS) to augment clinical care is of increasing interest with recent publications showing EWS algorithm alerts coupled with clinical response actions to have significant morbidity and mortality benefit.1 At Stanford Hospital we are developing an alert and response EWS using a machine learning (ML) model predicting clinical deterioration [...]

Background: Previous work at our major academic medical center found that compared to White patients, Black and Latinx patients with a primary diagnosis of congestive heart failure (CHF) were significantly less likely to be admitted to our specialized cardiology service rather than our general medicine service (GMS). This work additionally found that CHF patients admitted [...]