Background: Medical errors commonly occur during transitions of care, but medical trainees receive little formal education in how to recognize and address those patients most at risk. Teaching third year medical students to identify risk factors for adverse events may highlight practice changes to enhance safety during transitions. Purpose: To determine if a Transitions of [...]

Background: Literature regarding resident education in transitions of care is limited, particularly in geriatric populations. The University of Colorado performed a pilot of a virtual multidisciplinary conference call between providers on the geriatric inpatient unit of the University of Colorado Hospital and its Seniors Clinic. Residents rotating on the Acute Care of the Elder (ACE) [...]

Background: By law, patients have prompt access to electronic discharge notes in their charts. Technical language and abbreviations make notes difficult to read and understand for a typical patient. Large language models such as GPT-4 may have the potential to transform these notes into patient-friendly language and format. Our objective was to determine whether GPT-4 [...]

Background: Although many older adults will be hospitalized in their lifetime, most do not consider or plan ahead for their post-hospitalization support needs. When older adults experience a hospitalization, families often must react to the crisis leaving the older adult out of the decision process (e.g. choosing a skilled nursing facility, caregivers). With PCORI funding, [...]

Background: At academic centers the work of discharge planning has historically fallen on housestaff. The medical education community’s efforts to improve the trainee experience have led to an iterative process of duty hour reform and re-design. One effect has been “work compression” – each day a trainee is required to complete more tasks in less [...]

Background: Patients discharged from the hospital often face challenges accessing timely and effective follow-up care after discharge from the inpatient setting. Prior studies have demonstrated that lack of primary care clinic access can raise patients’ risk of readmission (1, 2). Effectiveness of a virtual transitions of care clinic has not been reported in the literature [...]

Background:  A small population of patients disproportionately consume an increasing share of medical resources.  These super-utilizers often have complex medical and psychosocial conditions that require carefully coordinated, individualized care.  As this population drives unplanned readmissions, programs to reduce readmissions may create unintended incentives to direct super-utilizers to another hospital system.   This study was designed to [...]

Background: Persons with opioid use disorders (OUD) represent a disproportionately high percentage of hospitalized patients, have greater lengths of stay and readmissions, can incur higher costs, and are at greater risk of drug-related death immediately post-discharge. Further, despite the availability of effective medications for OUD, patients often are not offered treatment during the inpatient encounter. [...]

Background: Warfarin and other anticoagulants increase the risk of hemorrhagic complications, including upper gastrointestinal hemorrhages (UGIB). Warfarin is commonly used in the management of atrial fibrillation to reduce the risk of ischemic stroke, and frequently resumed following UGIB. However, optimal timing of reinitiation remains unclear. Theory suggests that resuming warfarin immediately after UGIB would lead [...]

Background: For patients at increased risk of hospitalization, reducing hospitalization is often a key objective and can have important effects on health care costs. The Comprehensive Care Physician (CCP) model was developed originally at the University of Chicago to reintegrate inpatient and outpatient care under the same physician for patients at high risk of hospitalization [...]