The relationship between the follow-up to discharge ratio and length of stay.

Objectives: Average length of stay (ALOS) is used as a measure of the effectiveness of care delivery and therefore is an important operational measure when evaluating both the hospitalist group and individual hospitalist performance. No metric within the control of the individual hospitalist has been identified to support the individual hospitalist's contribution to the hospitalist group's ALOS goals. This study's objective was to evaluate the correlation between the follow-up to discharge ratio (F:D ratio) and ALOS and assess the relationship between F:D ratio and hospitalist experience.

Pharmacological thromboembolic prophylaxis for medical patients in a tertiary care, teaching community hospital: room for improvement.

Venous Thrombembolism (VTE) is a potentially lethal complication in hospitalized patients. Studies indicate that pharmacological prophylaxis may reduce the incidence of VTE. However, the use of VTE prophylaxis remains unclear.

The quantitative immunoturbidimetric D-dimer method to rule out venous thromboembolism (VTE).

D-dimer measurement is a technique that may improve the diagnostic strategy for venous thrombo-embolism (VTE). To evaluate D-dimer accuracy in the diagnosis of VTE, we identified 116 patients at Charleston Area Medical Center in Charleston, W.Va.

Using PDAs during the internal medicine clerkship.

In 2000, an Institute of Medicine Report stated that there are 99,000 deaths in hospitals each year due to medical errors. Many options have been tried to improve systems and practice patterns, but they have proven to be too cumbersome to be workable and were not accepted by physicians. We conducted a study of 19 third-year medical students (12 males, 7 females) at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, Charleston Division, during their eight-week clerkship in 2002 to determine whether providing them patient information at bedside with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) would be valuable.