Together in Care: An Enhanced Meals on Wheels Intervention Designed to Reduce Rehospitalizations among Older Adults with Cardiopulmonary Disease-Preliminary Findings.

Rehospitalizations in the Medicare population may be influenced by many diverse social factors, such as, but not limited to, access to food, social isolation, and housing safety. Rehospitalizations result in significant cost in this population, with an expected increase as Medicare enrollment grows. We designed a pilot study based upon a partnership between a hospital and a local Meals on Wheels agency to support patients following an incident hospitalization to assess impact on hospital utilization.

Comparing Critical Care Admissions Among Urban Populations Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, reassessing intensive care unit (ICU) use by population should be a priority for hospitals planning for critical care resource allocation. In our study, we reviewed the impact of COVID-19 on a community hospital serving an urban region, comparing the sociodemographic distribution of ICU admissions before and during the pandemic. We executed a time-sensitive analysis to see if COVID-19 ICU admissions reflect the regional sociodemographic populations and ICU admission trends before the pandemic.

The Effect of Eliminating Intermediate Severity Drug-Drug Interaction Alerts on Overall Medication Alert Burden and Acceptance Rate.

Objective: This study aimed to determine the effects of reducing the number of drug-drug interaction (DDI) alerts in an order entry system.

Methods: Retrospective pre-post analysis at an urban medical center of the rates of medication alerts and alert acceptance during a 5-month period before and 5-month period after the threshold for firing DDI alerts was changed from "intermediate" to "severe." To ensure that we could determine varying response to each alert type, we took an in-depth look at orders generating single alerts.

Factors associated with medication warning acceptance for hospitalized adults.

Background: Computerized provider order entry (CPOE) systems can warn clinicians ordering medications about potential allergic or adverse reactions, duplicate therapy, and interactions with other medications. Clinicians frequently override these warnings. Understanding the factors associated with warning acceptance should guide revisions to these systems.

Predicting symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhage versus lacunar disease in patients with longstanding hypertension.

Background And Purpose: Hypertension results in a spectrum of subcortical cerebrovascular disease. It is unclear why some individuals develop ischemia and others develop hemorrhage. Risk factors may differ for each population.

Combination therapy with interferon-alpha(2b), ribavirin, and amantadine in chronic hepatitis C nonresponders to interferon and ribavirin.

Standard therapies for the treatment of hepatitis C are ineffective in almost 50% of patients. Amantadine is an antiviral agent that may have activity against hepatitis C virus. In this pilot study, we evaluated the efficacy of a combination of interferon, ribavirin, and amantadine in patients with chronic hepatitis C who had previously failed 6-12 months of treatment with interferon and ribavirin.