Hospital Capacity Command Centers: A Benchmarking Survey on an Emerging Mechanism to Manage Patient Flow.

Background: Delayed hospital and emergency department (ED) patient throughput, which occurs when demand for inpatient care exceeds hospital capacity, is a critical threat to safety, quality, and hospital financial performance. In response, many hospitals are deploying capacity command centers (CCCs), which co-locate key work groups and aggregate real-time data to proactively manage patient flow. Only a narrow body of peer-reviewed articles have characterized CCCs to date.

Inpatient Capacity Management during COVID-19 Pandemic: The Yale New Haven Hospital Capacity Expansion Experience.

The 2019 SARS-CoV2 virus presented a capacity demand scenario for Yale New Haven Hospital. The response was created with a focus on clinical needs, but was also driven by the unique characteristics of the buildings within our institution. These physical characteristics were considered in the response as a safety measure as little was known about the transmissibility risk in the acute hospital setting of SARS-CoV2 at the time of response.

Accuracy of Height Measurement in the Inpatient Setting.

Accurate height measurement is critical for accurate dosing of medications, mechanical ventilation, and nutritional calculations. Prior research has identified inaccuracies with self-reported height, and height is notably important to measure accurately in critically ill patients. In this study, conducted in a large tertiary academic medical center, medical records rarely indicated the method of height measurement, and there were statistically significant variations in measured height across admissions.

Conversion of a Conference Room into a Low-Acuity Inpatient Medical Unit: A Creative Response to Influenza-Related Surge.

The 2017-2018 influenza season was associated with high demand for both emergency department (ED) care and inpatient acute care for influenza-like illness (ILI). This high demand resulted in increased numbers of inpatients and ED patients, including prolonged ED length of stay. A large, urban, academic medical center in a cold-weather region was limited in its ability to expand its footprint to create de novo locations of care, such as temporary outbuildings or tents.

Association of an Opioid Standard of Practice Intervention With Intravenous Opioid Exposure in Hospitalized Patients.

Importance: Opioids are commonly used to treat pain in hospitalized patients; however, intravenous administration carries an increased risk of adverse effects compared with oral administration. The subcutaneous route is an effective method of opioid delivery with favorable pharmacokinetics.

Objective: To assess an intervention to reduce intravenous opioid use, total parenteral opioid exposure, and the rate of patients administered parenteral opioids.

Predictors for patients understanding reason for hospitalization.

Objective: To examine predictors for understanding reason for hospitalization.

Methods: This was a retrospective analysis of a prospective, observational cohort study of patients 65 years or older admitted for acute coronary syndrome, heart failure, or pneumonia and discharged home. Primary outcome was complete understanding of diagnosis, based on post-discharge patient interview.

Using System Inflammatory Response Syndrome as an Easy-to-Implement, Sustainable, and Automated Tool for All-Cause Deterioration Among Medical Inpatients.

Objectives: Clinical deterioration detection among adult inpatients is known to be suboptimal, and many electronic health record tools have been developed to help identify these patients. Many of these tools are focused on sepsis spectrum disorders, but the evolution of the definition of sepsis is moving toward increased specificity, which may make automated detection of clinical deterioration from nonsepsis-related conditions less likely. The objectives of this study were to develop and to examine the use of a low-cost, highly sustainable deterioration detection tool based on systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) criteria.

Effect of therapeutic interchange on medication reconciliation during hospitalization and upon discharge in a geriatric population.

Background: Therapeutic interchange of a same class medication for an outpatient medication is a widespread practice during hospitalization in response to limited hospital formularies. However, therapeutic interchange may increase risk of medication errors. The objective was to characterize the prevalence and safety of therapeutic interchange.

The Growth of Hospitalists and the Future of the Society of General Internal Medicine: Results from the 2014 Membership Survey.

According to the most recent annual membership surveys, hospitalists are a rapidly growing component of the Society of General Internal Medicine (SGIM). Should this trend continue, hospitalists could increase from 22% of SGIM membership in 2014 to nearly 33% by 2020. Only 34% of hospitalists who responded to the survey, however, consider SGIM their academic home, compared to 54% of non-hospitalist respondents.

Sepsis as 2 problems: Identifying sepsis at admission and predicting onset in the hospital using an electronic medical record-based acuity score.

Purpose: Early identification and treatment improve outcomes for patients with sepsis. Current screening tools are limited. We present a new approach, recognizing that sepsis patients comprise 2 distinct and unequal populations: patients with sepsis present on admission (85%) and patients who develop sepsis in the hospital (15%) with mortality rates of 12% and 35%, respectively.

Exit Survey of Senior Residents: Cost Conscious but Uninformed.

Background Cost awareness, to ensure physician stewardship of limited resources, is increasingly recognized as an important skill for physicians. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education has made cost awareness part of systems-based practice, a core competency of resident education. However, little is known about resident cost awareness.

Impact of laboratory cost display on resident attitudes and knowledge about costs.

Aim: Cost awareness has been proposed as a strategy for curbing the continued rise of healthcare costs. However, most physicians are unaware of the cost of diagnostic tests, and interventions have had mixed results. We sought to assess resident physician cost awareness following sustained visual display of costs into electronic health record (EHR) order entry screens.

Novel integration of systems-based practice into internal medicine residency programs: the Interactive Cost-Awareness Resident Exercise (I-CARE).

Background: The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and American Board of Internal Medicine have identified cost-awareness as an important component to residency training. Cost-awareness is generally not emphasized in current, traditional residency curricula despite the recognized importance of this topic.

Description: Using a traditional Morning Report structure and actual charge data from our institution, the charges associated with trainee-directed workup of clinical cases are compared in a friendly competition among medical students, interns, residents, and faculty.

Effectiveness of written hospitalist sign-outs in answering overnight inquiries.

Background: Hospitalists are key providers of care to medical inpatients, and sign-out is an integral part of providing safe, high-quality inpatient care. There is little known about hospitalist-to-hospitalist sign-out.

Objective: To evaluate the quality of hospitalist/physician-extender sign-outs by assessing how well the sign-out prepares the night team for overnight events and to determine attributes of effective sign-out.

Quality of discharge practices and patient understanding at an academic medical center.

Importance: With growing national focus on reducing readmissions, there is a need to comprehensively assess the quality of transitional care, including discharge practices, patient perspectives, and patient understanding.

Objective: To conduct a multifaceted evaluation of transitional care from a patient-centered perspective.

Design: Prospective observational cohort study, May 2009 through April 2010.

Assessment of internal medicine trainee sign-out quality and utilization habits.

Transfers of care have been associated with adverse events. High quality sign-out may help mitigate this risk. The authors sought to characterize the clinical questions asked of physicians covering patients overnight and to determine the adequacy of current sign-out practice to anticipate inquiries.

Comprehensive quality of discharge summaries at an academic medical center.

Background: Discharge summaries are essential for safe transitions from hospital to home.

Objective: To conduct a comprehensive quality assessment of discharge summaries.

Design: Prospective cohort study.