Publications by authors named "Linda Thomas-Hemak"

Background: Lack of health insurance is associated with adverse clinical outcomes; however, the association between health insurance status and in-hospital outcomes after out-of-hospital ventricular fibrillation (OHVFA) arrest is unclear.

Hypothesis: Lack of health insurance is associated with worse in-hospital outcomes after out-of-hospital ventricular fibrillation arrest.

Methods: From January 2003 to December 2014, hospitalizations with a primary diagnosis of OHVFA in patients ≥18 years of age were extracted from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample.

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More than 105 million referrals of Medicare beneficiaries to specialists occur annually. Different settings and electronic health records have made care coordination complex. PCPI (formerly American Medical Association-convened Physicians Consortium for Performance Improvement) and The Wright Center for Graduate Medical Education sponsored the Closing the Referral Loop pilot project.

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Current efforts to achieve practice transformation in our health care delivery system are, for good reason, primarily focused on technical change. Such efforts include meaningful use, population health metrics reporting, and the creation and sustaining of team-based patient-centered medical home delivery sites. If practice transformation is meant to ultimately and fundamentally transform the health care system and its culture to achieve the quadruple aim of better health, better care, affordability, and satisfaction of patients and providers, these technical changes are necessary but not sufficient.

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Purpose. The effect of patient centered medical home (PCMH) curriculum interventions on residents' self-reported and demonstrated knowledge, skills and attitudes in PCMH competency arenas (KSA) is lacking in the literature. This study aimed to assess the impact of PCMH curricular innovations on the KSA of Internal Medicine residents.

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Hypercalcemia in sarcoidosis is due to three mechanistic reasons: (1) systemic conversion of 25-hydroxyvitamin D to 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D by the enzyme 1-α hydroxylase produced by activated monocyte/macrophage system, (2) production of parathormone-related peptide (PTHrP) by the sarcoid granuloma, (3) tissue-level conversion of 25-hydroxyvitamin D to 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D by 1-αhydroxylase produced by local monocyte/macrophage system in the sarcoid granuloma. We report two cases of one proposed mechanism of hypercalcaemia in sarcoidosis (mechanism 3). Both individuals presented with sarcoidosis and 25-hydroxyvitamin D deficiency and developed symptomatic hypercalcaemia with vitamin D replacement.

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Background And Objectives: Evidence is conflicting with regards to the role of vitamin D in statin induced myalgia (SIM). Studies so far have assessed cross-sectional association and were limited by study sample selected predominantly from cardiology clinics. In this retrospective cohort study we assessed the association between vitamin D and SIM and attempted to establish a serum vitamin D cutoff to identify patients at risk for developing SIM.

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