Comparison of hospitalists and nonhospitalists in inpatient length of stay adjusting for patient and physician characteristics.

Objective: To determine the independent effect of hospitalist status upon inpatient length of stay after controlling for case mix, as well as patient-level and provider-level variables such as age, years since physician medical school graduation, and volume status of provider.

Design: Observational retrospective cohort study employing a hierarchical random intercept logistic regression model.

Setting: Tertiary-care teaching hospital.

In hospital cardiac arrest: a role for automatic defibrillation.

Introduction: Sudden cardiac death (SCD) survival decreases by 10% for each minute of delay in defibrillation, however, survival rates of 98% can be achieved when defibrillation is accomplished within 30s of collapse. Recently, a fully automated external cardioverter-defibrillator (AECD) was approved by the FDA for in-hospital use. The AECD can be programmed to automatically defibrillate when a life threatening ventricular arrhythmia occurs.