Background: Assessing severity of illness using available electronic medical record (EMR) data on admission and predicting inpatient mortality is very challenging. Lacking standardized practices around end of life issues, hospitalists use their clinical judgment in making these crucial decisions. Prolonged discussions may be needed in medically complex patients to direct an optimal plan of care [...]

Background: Conducting early serious illness conversations (SICs) is a high-value intervention that improves the patient and family experience while aligning care with patient preferences. Given the constraints of hospital-based clinicians, using the EHR to identify appropriate patients for SICs remains a key challenge. The aims of this study were to explore whether the EHR’s readmission [...]

Background: Misalignment of goals of care at the End-of-Life exposes patients to risk and the health care system to considerable costs. A lack of end of life conversations can lead to unrealistic patient expectations, patient harm, and multiple hospital readmissions. This study aims to identify physician perspectives on the barriers to initiating end of life [...]

Background: Several electronic health record (EHR) mortality prediction models have been developed to promote early goals of care discussions (GOCD) but only a few models were evaluated prospectively. We aimed to implement a real-time 30-day inpatient mortality prediction model previously developed at our facility and evaluate its effect on GOCD in seriously ill transferred patients. [...]