Background: Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 can clinically deteriorate in the second week of illness after a period of initial stability. Thus, an important clinical question is determining when it is safe to discharge these patients from the hospital without overwhelming hospitals’ capacities. Unfortunately, discharge criteria for COVID-19 patients are often based on expert opinion, with [...]

Background: Community acquired severity scores are well known and used routinely in predicting mortality and risk of inpatient and ICU admission in suspected bacterial pneumonia patients. However such scores have not been studied in patients with influenza infection and influenza pneumonia. We attempted to validate one such score, CURB65 and and identify other scores that [...]

Background: Community acquired severity scores are well known and used routinely in predicting mortality and risk of inpatient and ICU admission in suspected bacterial pneumonia patients. However such scores have not been studied in patients with influenza infection and influenza pneumonia. We attempted to validate one such score, CURB65 and and identify other scores that [...]

Background: ED visits increased to 145.59 million in 2016 (CDC 2019), resulting in an increase in hospital admissions. Chen et al. showed a correlation between the overall ED census and likelihood of admission; while, Velasquez et al. found up to 28% of hospitalists reported having admitted patients when no admission criteria were met. They described [...]

Background: Obesity is associated with many cardiopulmonary comorbidities independently associated with worse health outcomes in acute illness, yet the physiological mechanisms potentially making obese patients more susceptible to COVID-19 remain uncertain. Adiposity-derived immunosuppression, increased thrombogenic potential, and predilection towards inflammatory hyperreactivity have all been postulated as potential mediators of this phenomenon. Yet, the most obvious [...]

Background: Telemedicine emerged as an innovative approach to addressing staffing shortages for hospitalists in resource-limited areas (1), the COVID-19 surge (2), and off-hour shifts (3). Telemedicine can be adapted to non-traditional hospitalist roles, i.e. the triagist where a hospitalist assesses patients for potential admissions and supports outpatient to inpatient transitions (4). Modifying the triagist to [...]

Background: Ongoing staffing shortages, high bed occupancy rates and post COVID changes are putting substantial strain not only on the inpatient environment, but also on the Emergency Department (ED). Increase in the number of boarded patients and length of boarding times pose risk to optimal patient care. Across the nation, the role of hospitalist as [...]

Background: A hospitalist “triagist” physician assesses patients for admission and supports the transition of patients from the outpatient to inpatient setting [1]. Active bed management and triaging by hospitalists have been reported to improve emergency room (ER) patient flow and ER to ICU throughput, while hospitalist-directed transfer and admission of stable ER patients may shorten [...]

Case Presentation: A 68-year-old male with a medical history of gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) on Imatinib and paroxysmal atrial fibrillation on Apixaban presented with a 4-week history of progressive dyspnea. He had outpatient evaluation for these symptoms previously at which time COVID-19 testing was negative and chest radiography findings were consistent with pneumonia. He was [...]

Case Presentation: This is a 72-year-old female patient who presents to the ED for the evaluation of loss of consciousness. The patient’s family also endorsed dark stools for the past few days. She has a medical history significant for Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus, and papillary thyroid cancer. On arrival, the Patient’s BP was 126/55, Heart [...]