Background: More than 30 million children and adolescents participate in organized sports in the United States every year. Participation has numerous benefits including improved physical fitness and better school performance, however, it is not without risk. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children sustain more than 3.1 million sports and recreation-related injuries [...]

Background: Discharge delays adversely affect patient flow leading to prolonged Emergency Department (ED) boarding time and decrease in hospital bed availability. Discharge improvement processes can mitigate these delays, but in practice it has been difficult to implement and create substantial impact on discharge delays. Purpose: To develop and implement a discharge physician assistant (DAP) role [...]

Background: Hospital at Home programs originated as pilot initiatives on a national scale, gaining momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic. The need for reevaluating healthcare delivery systems became pronounced during this period. Kent Hospital in Rhode Island collaborated with key stakeholders, including Blue Cross Blue Shield of Rhode Island, United Health Care, and CMS, to bring [...]

Background: The 7- and 30-day patient readmission rates are tracked by hospitals and are used as a metric to measure physicians’ quality of patient care. Several tools currently predict and prevent early readmission rates based on patient-specific characteristics. However, few studies have demonstrated if physician-specific characteristics play a role. The purpose of this study is [...]

Background: Physician burnout is a persistent stress reaction which can include emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feeling of decreased personal accomplishment. Burnout affects all specialties and all practices, but burnout rates are higher among women physicians as compared to men (56% vs 41%). Gender disparities in burnout have many causes, including inequities in recruitment, pay and [...]

Background: By 2022 health care spending is expected to climb to 19.9% of the US GDP and is forecasted to continue rising with no end in sight[1]. The patient (or consumer) is completely detached from the reimbursement system and thus unaware of the distribution of health care dollars. The purpose of this study is to [...]

Background: More often than not, hospitalized patients are not able to correctly identify members of their physician team. Being able to identify physicians is a critical component of developing the patient-physician relationship. The use of facecards and whiteboards appears to improve hospitalized patients’ ability to identify their physician and may be associated with improvements in [...]

Background: A publicly funded Health Authority embraced a Hospitalist service in 2000 as a quality improvement initiative. This relationship turned contentious over several contract renegotiations. With each successive contract, trust declined and the working environment became adversarial. Failed negotiations lead to a contract termination in 2015, ultimately affecting the stability of this medical service. Purpose: [...]

Background: National data document that hospital medicine groups frequently lack representative diversity in terms of race, ethnic background and gender. This diversity gap further expands with career development and promotion. Traditional physician hiring strategies are susceptible to elements of bias that may contribute to these disparities. Purpose: To design and implement a structured process for [...]

Background: Diabetes is common, present in up to one third of hospitalized patients and up to 50% of critically ill patients. Studies have shown that hyperglycemia among hospitalized patients leads to worse clinical outcomes and increases readmission rates by over 30% relative to normo-glycemic patients. Insulin is the only medication recommended for treatment of diabetes [...]