Flight of the COVID-19 patient: experience with a Wuhan evacuee: a case report.

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020.

Case Presentation: We report a case of a 51-year-old Chinese woman who was evacuated from Wuhan, China and diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 infection at a Southern California quarantine facility. Her clinical course was notable for high fevers, night sweats, productive cough, transient leukopenia, lymphopenia, thrombocytopenia, and transaminitis.

Comparison of Multiplex Gastrointestinal Pathogen Panel and Conventional Stool Testing for Evaluation of Diarrhea in Patients with Inflammatory Bowel Diseases.

Background And Aims: Gastrointestinal pathogen panels (GPPs) are increasingly being used for evaluation of diarrhea. The impact of these tests on patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) is unknown. We performed a time-interrupted cohort study comparing GPPs and conventional stool evaluation in patients with IBD with diarrhea.

Prescription Medication Obtainment Methods and Misuse.

Background: Abuse of prescription medications is an ever-expanding epidemic in the United States.

Objective: This study intends to help provide physicians with more knowledge about the behaviors that patients with a substance use disorder may exhibit in an effort to obtain medications.

Design: Patients who were willing to participate in the survey were interviewed by a physician.

Data envelopment analysis: dynamic possibilities in an academic medical center application.

In a fairly short period of time, data envelopment analysis (DEA) has grown into a powerful quantitative, analytical tool for measuring the relative performance of similar organizations. DEA has been successfully applied to traditional service industries such as universities and hospitals as well as to trades as diverse as banking and manufacturing. To the best of our knowledge, however, DEA has not been applied in the academic medicine healthcare setting.

Introduction of the Balanced Scorecard into an academic department of medicine: creating a road map to success.

In this paper, we describe: 1) the environmental forces driving performance measurement and management in the University of California San Diego Department of Medicine; 2) the systematic process used by the department to implement a Balanced Scorecard; 3) the initial direct and indirect outcomes of this effort; 4) the opportunities and challenges to the Balanced Scorecard as a management directive; and 5) future directions.

A trial of education, prompts, and opinion leaders to improve prescription of lipid modifying therapy by primary care physicians for patients with ischemic heart disease.

Background: Recent clinical trials indicate that treatment with lipid modifying therapy improves outcomes in patients with ischemic heart disease (IHD) and low levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. The results of these trials, however, have not been widely implemented in clinical practice.

Objectives: To develop and test an intervention designed to increase the rate of prescription of lipid modifying therapy and to determine the relative effectiveness of three different prompts (progress notes, patient letters, or computer chart reminders).

Thyroid function tests--the next generation.

The Council on Scientific Affairs of the California Medical Association presents the following inventory of items of progress in internal medicine. Each item, in the judgment of a panel of knowledgeable physicians, has recently become reasonably firmly established, both as to scientific fact and important clinical significance. The items are presented in simple epitome, and an authoritative reference, both to the item itself and to the subject as a whole, is generally given for those who may be unfamiliar with a particular item.

Embryonal carcinoma of the testis presenting as a left heart mass.

A 31-year-old man with a history of intravenous drug abuse and tooth abscess was admitted for evaluation of possible infective endocarditis. Echocardiography showed that he had a left atrial mass. The mass removed from the left atrium had the same histology as the primary embryonal carcinoma discovered in the right testicle during hospitalization.