Background: Graduate medical education (GME) comprises residents and fellows being trained at a hospital but also providing essential patient care. At academic hospitals, residents and fellows are often the front-line physicians and an integral part of the interprofessional team. The Accreditation Council for GME (ACGME) requires annual participation by residents and fellows in quality improvement [...]

Background: Novel strategies such as the block system have been implemented to address resident teaching while maintaining continuity of care. Studies assessing block scheduling and adequate delivery of quality improvment (QI) concepts are limited. The aim of this study is to show how utilizing the 4+1 block system can deliver a longitudinal quality improvement (QI) curriculum and increase the [...]

Background: Healthcare system high utilizers create a financial burden raising healthcare costs and quality improvement measures should be assessed to create a positive change. We aimed to characterize the high-utilizer patients in our system to create tailored interventions to address their specific needs and ultimately reduce recurrent admissions. Methods: A quality improvement project was implemented [...]

Background: What happens when “best practice” is not practiced? Prescribing naloxone to patients at high risk of opioid overdose is considered best practice by the United States Department of Health in order to decrease the risk of overdose and maximize patient safety. Research also shows that patients who receive naloxone may successfully use it on [...]

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a major cause of hospital readmissions and healthcare costs. HF patients have the highest rate of unexpected readmission of all diseases tracked by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), at 21.2% (1). HF prevalence is also projected to increase 46% from 2012 to 2030, with total costs rising [...]

Background: As a group of medical students in a five-week leadership program, we were charged with making a medicine inpatient unit at an urban quaternary care academic medical center the best unit in the hospital. Research shows that the hospital spends an estimated $2721 for every inpatient day (Kaiser, AHA Annual Survey, 2015). Longer lengths [...]

Background: During 2016, the total billed cost of cardiac monitoring neared 4 million dollars at our institution and many patients were observed on the monitor without approved indication as published by the American Heart Association’s (AHA) guidelines published in 2014. The overutilization of cardiac monitoring constitutes a misappropriation of resources which results in undue health [...]

Background: The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM)’s Quality Improvement (QI) Special Interest Group’s (QI SIG) mission is “to create and maintain a community that promotes QI by connecting QI enthusiasts to each other and the resources necessary to develop and hone QI skills.” During this year, without in-person local or national meetings as opportunities to [...]

Background: Serum B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) levels, measured on admission and discharge, have been a prudent predictor of outcomes among patients with heart failure. However, daily BNP measurements have no benefits for the management of heart failure and are costly. We investigated the practice pattern in St. Luke’s Hospital, and employed an educational intervention to [...]

Background: There is a rising demand for hospitalist involvement in quality improvement (QI). Hospitalists now assume larger patient volumes and have become natural leaders in daily patient care, interdisciplinary rounding and patient safety. Despite a seemingly direct fit into QI, the majority of hospitalists have received minimal QI training in medical school, residency or beyond. [...]