Multicenter validation of the Philadelphia EMS admission rule (PEAR) to predict hospital admission in adult patients using out-of-hospital data.

Objectives: The objective was to validate a previously derived prediction rule for hospital admission using routinely collected out-of-hospital information.

Methods: The authors performed a multicenter retrospective cohort study of 1,500 randomly selected, adult patients transported to six separate emergency departments (EDs; three community and three academic hospitals in three separate health systems) by a city-run emergency medical services (EMS) system over a 1-year period. Patients younger than 18 years or who bypassed the ED to be evaluated by trauma, obstetric, or psychiatric teams were excluded.

Can a computerized tracking system improve faculty compliance with medical student evaluations?

Aim: We examined whether using a new personal digital assistant (PDA)-based computerized tracking system (PDAT) improved the rate of faculty evaluation of students compared to using written clinical encounter cards. Also, we examined whether the addition of e-mail reminders to PDAT affected the evaluation rate.

Methods: Retrospective review of collected data on evaluation rates before and after implementation of the computerized tracking system, with and without e-mail reminders.