Surgical Versus Medical Team Assignment and Secondary Palliative Care Services for Patients Dying in a Cardiac Hospital.

Background:: Secondary palliative care (SPC) provides several benefits for patients with cardiovascular disease, but historically, it has been underutilized in this population. Prior research suggests a low rate of SPC consultation by surgical teams in general, but little is known about how surgical teams utilize SPC in the setting of severe cardiovascular disease.

Aim:: To determine if surgical team assignment affects the probability of SPC for inpatients dying of cardiovascular disease.

Graphical Instructions for Administration and Scoring the Mini-Cog: Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial.

Objectives: To develop a novel set of graphical Mini-Cog instructions designed to aid clinicians previously untrained on the Mini-Cog in accurate administration and scoring and to determine whether use of these graphical instructions improved the speed and accuracy of deployment of this tool.

Design: Randomized clinical trial.

Setting: Testing was conducted in a simulated environment with a mock patient.

Discordance between 'actual' and 'scheduled' check-in times at a heart failure clinic.

Introduction: A 2015 Institute Of Medicine statement "Transforming Health Care Scheduling and Access: Getting to Now", has increased concerns regarding patient wait times. Although waiting times have been widely studied, little attention has been paid to the role of patient arrival times as a component of this phenomenon. To this end, we investigated patterns of patient arrival at scheduled ambulatory heart failure (HF) clinic appointments and studied its predictors.

Outpatient Palliative Cardiology Service Embedded Within a Heart Failure Clinic: Experiences With an Emerging Model of Care.

Background: The role of palliative care consultation in the outpatient treatment of patients with symptomatic heart failure (HF) is poorly studied. In August 2015, we created an outpatient palliative care service embedded within the HF clinic at Cleveland Clinic main campus.

Aim: To characterize patients cared for by our novel outpatient palliative cardiology service, including their degree of HF, symptoms, comorbidities, topics addressed in clinic, palliative treatments prescribed, advanced directives status, and mortality.