Background: “Hospital at Home” (HaH) models of care have existed for over 20 years in the U.S. Recent demand for healthcare value, advances in relevant technologies, and the ongoing global pandemic have driven renewed attention to HaH models, including from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and have spawned several pilots within the […]

Background: Cirrhosis was the fifteenth leading cause of death in the United States in 2019, with ascites being the most common major complication leading to hospital admission. Patients with ascites have recurrent hospital admissions with disproportionate use of hospital resources. Large volume abdominal paracentesis can be done safely by trained providers and is associated with […]

Background: Approved medications for opioid-induced constipation (OIC-Rx) are effective for patients with opioid-induced constipation (OIC).[1] Yet, there is little evidence on the real-world impact of OIC-Rx use in the emergency department (ED). This study aimed to compare health care resource utilization (HRU) in hospitals and healthcare costs between patients in the ED who did/did not […]

Background: Point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) is being adopted by hospitalists and internal medicine (IM) residencies due to its impact on procedural safety, diagnostic accuracy and efficiency, provider and patient satisfaction, and its role as a teaching adjunct in medical education. Studies demonstrating impact on system efficiency and cost are few and mostly limited to the emergency […]

Background: Hospital-at-Home (HaH) is a safe and effective alternative to high-cost, traditional hospitalization in patients with a range of medical conditions, such as non-severe community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique situation with favorable policy changes, hospital resource constraints, and a clearly defined patient population that helped to increase HaH program deployment and […]

Background: Hospital at home (HaH) programs have provided critical inpatient-level care to acutely ill patients throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.1 Despite the documented benefits2-5, referral rates for HaH often mirror capacity demands. The pattern reflects implementation barriers including the tendency to default to usual care and time constraints.6 Continued success of HaH hinges on the question […]

Background: Telemetry is widely used in hospitalized settings for the detection of cardiac arrhythmias. Our hospital uses an electronic telemetry to curb unnecessary telemetry use. The AHA has identified the utility of telemetry in non-cardiac conditions as an area of future research. We studied the telemetry ordering patterns of patients admitted with diagnosis of COVID-19 […]

Background: Gout is a condition that is commonly diagnosed and treated in hospitalized patients. The gold standard for diagnosis of gout is identification of negatively birefringent, needle shaped uric acid crystals within neutrophils in fluid obtained by joint aspiration of affected joints. There have been a number of small studies that have shown serum uric […]

Background: Mitigating physician burnout among health care professionals, especially among hospital providers, has become a national priority in the wake of COVID-19. While most studies focus on individual factors (e.g., exercise, psychosocial support), few studies have evaluated systemic factors (e.g., schedules, leadership). The objective of this study was to determine which systemic factors are associated […]

Background: Nurse Practitioners (NP) & Physician Assistants (PA), also referred to as Advanced Practice Providers (APPs), have become an integral part of Hospital Medicine Groups (HMG). As per the State of Hospital Medicine report (1) from the Society of Hospital Medicine, 83% of HMGs had APPs in 2020. Over the next few years, the average […]