News
Tamsulosin Can Be Used as Expulsive Therapy for Some Ureteric Stones
May 23, 2016
Clinical question: Is tamsulosin efficacious as an expulsive therapy for distal ureter stones ≤10 mm in diameter? Background: Ureteric calculi are a common reason for hospital admission, and use of medical expulsive therapy during observation periods for small caliber stones has gained much atten
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New Community-Based Palliative Care Certification to Launch
May 22, 2016
The industry’s first certification for home health and hospices that provide top-caliber community-based palliative care services in the patient’s place of residence is being launched by The Joint Commission. [caption id="attachment_15024" align="alignright" width="300"] Image Credit: Shuttershoc
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Early Follow-up Can Reduce Readmission Rates
May 22, 2016
Heart failure patients who had early follow-up (within seven days of discharge) with general medicine or cardiology providers had a lower risk of being readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, according to a study from Kaiser Permanente published in the journal Medical Care. “We found that foll
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Dr. Hospitalist: Improper, Aggressive Billing Raises Ethical, Legal Concerns
May 21, 2016
Dear Dr. Hospitalist: I am a seasoned hospitalist at a large academic medical center in the Northeast and have recently become more bothered by how our group is being coerced to aggressively bill for our services.
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Prevalence, Characteristics of Physicians Prone to Malpractice Claims
May 20, 2016
Clinical question: Do claim-prone physicians account for a substantial share of all paid malpractice claims? Background: Many studies have compared physicians who have multiple malpractice claims against them with colleagues who have few or no claims against them and have identified systemic diff
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Association of Frailty on One-Year Postoperative Mortality Following Major Elective Non-Cardiac Surgery
May 20, 2016
Clinical question: What is the association of preoperative frailty on one-year postoperative mortality? Background: Frailty is an aggregate expression of susceptibility to poor outcomes owing to age and disease-related deficits that accumulate with multiple domains.
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Preorder 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report
May 19, 2016
The State of Hospital Medicine (SoHM) report is the most comprehensive survey of hospital medicine in the country and provides current data on hospitalist compensation and production and also covers practice demographics, staffing levels, staff growth, and compensation models. “The SoHM report is
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Hospitalist Administrator Amanda Trask, MBA, MHA, Implements SHM Recommendations at Catholic Health Initiatives
May 19, 2016
As the national vice president of the hospital medicine service line at Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) in Englewood, Colo., Amanda Trask, MBA, MHA, FACHE, CMPE, SFHM, faces many challenges daily surrounding strategy and engagement of CHI’s hospital medicine group.
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Patients Who Don’t Speak English are Likely to Return to the Emergency Room
May 13, 2016
(Reuters Health) - Patients in the emergency room who don't speak English well are slightly more likely to return within days, suggesting their care the first time was not as good as it could have been, researchers say. In a study in one New York hospital, about 4 percent of English speakers made
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The Treatment of Obstructive Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy is best in Higher-Volume Hospitals
May 12, 2016
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Higher-volume hospitals do better in treatment of obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), but more efforts are needed to direct patients to these centers, according to New York-based researchers. In an April 27 online paper in JAMA Cardiology, they note that rec