Background: In the acute care environment, healthcare workers interface with patients who have limited access to medical care and a high prevalence of social determinants of health (SDoH) barriers.1 The inpatient setting presents a key intervention point where the social needs of vulnerable populations might be addressed. Standard inpatient medicine care teams, however, lack the [...]

Background: Lack of mobility in the inpatient hospital setting hastens functional decline in elderly patients and is associated with increased risk of complications such as falls, delirium, venous thromboembolism (VTE), and skin breakdown. These adverse outcomes drive increased cost as patients spend additional time in both the acute and post-acute care settings. Physical activity is [...]

Background: Academic hospitalists aspire to be highly effective teachers and must demonstrate excellence in teaching to be promoted. Internal Medicine (IM) residency programs increasingly rely on such hospitalists to supervise residents when they are on inpatient service. Accordingly, outstanding resident teaching and evaluations are imperative to the advancement of academic hospitalists and the success of [...]

Background: Prolonged lengths of stay (PLOS) on general internal medicine wards are associated with increased mortality and morbidity for patients and represent a costly source of health care spending [1]. Increasingly, nonmedical barriers to discharge, including the need for guardianship, limited facility options, and lack of home support are recognized as contributors to PLOS in [...]

Background: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a pervasive disease affecting 28.6 million (11.3%) American adults in 2021.1 Medications for AUD (MAUD), including naltrexone, acamprosate, and disulfiram, are effective, yet less than 5% of these patients received treatment.1,2    Inpatient encounters of patients with AUD present a crucial opportunity to initiate MAUD, prompting this quality improvement [...]

Background: While hospitals are primarily designed to provide acute care, a subset of patients have prolonged lengths of stay beyond medical necessity for months on general medicine wards[1]. These cases often occur in vulnerable patient populations, including those with mental health and substance use disorders[2], impaired decision-making capacity[3, 4], and housing insecurity[3]. However, few studies [...]