Targeting the Correct Population When Designing Transitional Care Programs for Medicare Patients Hospitalized With Heart Failure.

This study uses data from a large academic medical center to estimate the accuracy of the criteria used by Medicare to represent the burden of hospitalizations for heart failure.

Data mining derived treatment algorithms from the electronic medical record improve theoretical empirical therapy for outpatient urinary tract infections.

Purpose: We determined whether data mining derived algorithms from electronic databases can improve empirical antimicrobial therapy in outpatients with a urinary tract infection.

Materials And Methods: The electronic medical records from 3,308 visits associated with a positive urine culture at Northwestern's outpatient Urology and Internal Medicine clinics and Emergency Department from 2005 to 2009 were interrogated. Bacterial species and susceptibility rates for trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, ciprofloxacin and nitrofurantoin were compared.