Background: Internal medicine residency contains procedural training, including guidance in paracentesis, thoracentesis, lumbar puncture, arthrocentesis, and central line placement. As a result, most hospitalists are able to perform these bedside procedures. However, national trends confirm that these procedures are increasingly referred to interventional radiology, and these referrals are associated with higher direct hospital costs.1 Enhancing [...]

Background: Ultrasound-guidance has become the standard for bedside procedures in the emergency and inpatient settings due to its perceived impact on first attempt success and complications. Prior literature on paracentesis notes a 10% rate of overall complications, 5% rate of technical problems, and a 1% rate of bleeding. However, existing cohorts often include outpatients or [...]

Background: Internal medicine and hospital medicine providers are under pressure to move patients quickly through the hospital and decrease length of stay. Providers spend most of their clinical time seeing patients, documenting or coordinating care and have minimal time to disrupt workflow to perform common bedside procedures such as paracentesis, lumbar punctures, central lines, arthrocentesis [...]

Background: Internal medicine and hospital medicine providers are under pressure to move patients quickly through the hospital and decrease length of stay. Providers spend most of their clinical time seeing patients, documenting or coordinating care and have minimal time to disrupt workflow to perform common bedside procedures such as paracentesis, lumbar punctures, central lines, arthrocentesis [...]

Background: Bedside procedures are safe, cost effective, and efficient when performed by trained hospitalist physicians, unfortunately it is a skill that has been lost over the years when not practiced after residency. Interventional radiologists (IR) perform the bulk of these procedures in many different hospitals, but this can lead to delay in patient care, increased [...]

Background: Many hospitalist programs have established a bedside procedure team to encourage timeliness of necessary bedside procedures, reduce diagnostic delays, and decrease length of stay. We assessed the impact of a bedside procedure team on the timeliness of the procedure and length of stay (LOS). Methods: A hospitalist-run On-call Procedure Team (OPT) was launched in [...]