Background: Electronic messages represent a growing proportion of inter-professional team communication in the inpatient setting. Poor communication hinders team collaboration, increases patient readmissions, and may facilitate burnout. Descriptions of inter-provider communications have largely utilized survey data in specialized settings at a single time-point. We sought to characterize in-patient hospital-wide inter-provider communication patterns over a year. [...]

Background: With 81% of Americans having access to smartphones (1) and 58% using the internet for health related questions (2), there is a need for online resources to prepare patients and families for common experiences in the inpatient setting. The creation of Web based sites for patients and caregivers, such as TheHospitalizedPatient.com, attempts to fill [...]

Background: The most acute patients presenting to the Emergency Department (ED) requirean admission to the inpatient setting. A timely triage and admission process can improve the outcomes of these critically ill patients. Forty-six percent of admissions through our ED are admitted across multiple medicine services. We originally utilized a rotating Medical Admitting Resident (MAR) to [...]