News
Medicare Tests New Quality Measure: Readmission Rates for Heart Failure
October 6, 2015
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has wrapped up a test run of a new measure for readmission of heart failure patients as the federal agency tries to educate hospitals and hospitalists before formally including it as a quality metric in fiscal year 2018. The trial concludes O
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Billing, Coding Documentation to Support Services, Minimize Risks
October 6, 2015
[caption id="attachment_11470" align="alignright" width="295"] Image Credit: ILLUSTRATION/PAUL JUESTRICH; PHOTOs shutterstock.com[/caption] The electronic health record (EHR) has many benefits: Improved patient care; Improved care coordination; Improved diagnostics and patient outcomes;
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Urinalysis Is Reliable Infection Predictor in Infants
October 6, 2015
Clinical question: In infants younger than three months of age with bacteremic urinary tract infection (UTI), how sensitive and specific are urinalysis (UA) findings? Background: Infants are commonly hospitalized with UTIs. The gold standard for diagnosis is considered to be urine culture.
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Society of Hospital Medicine Opens Enrollment for Practice Administrators’ Mentor Program
October 6, 2015
SHM’s Practice Administrators Committee piloted a mentor/mentee program in January 2014 as a way to assist those who were new to practice administration and/or to hospital medicine.
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Use of Medical Scribes Spurs Debate About Costs, Difficulties of Electronic Health Records
October 6, 2015
[caption id="attachment_11554" align="alignright" width="295"] Image Credit: ILLUSTRATION/PAUL JUESTRICH; PHOTOs shutterstock.com[/caption] The hospitalists at six Illinois hospitals, physicians who are provided by Best Practices Inpatient Care, were grappling with some issues that might sound fa
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10 Things Geriatricians Want Hospitalists to Know
October 6, 2015
[caption id="attachment_11557" align="alignright" width="295"] Image Credit: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM[/caption] How many octogenarians do you treat in a year? Nonagenarians? Centenarians? How much have their numbers increased over the last two decades?
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Hospitalists Support Medicare’s Plan to Reimburse Advance Care Planning
October 6, 2015
[caption id="attachment_11434" align="alignright" width="295"] SHM has joined 65 medical specialty and professional societies in signing a letter to HHS asking for end-of-life care codes to be formalized in CY 2016.Image Credit: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM[/caption] On July 8, following on the heels of the
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30-Day Readmission May Be Due to Income or Education
October 6, 2015
When patients are hospitalized more than once in the same month, it may have more to do with their income or education levels than the quality of care they received, a U.S.
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Letter to the Editor: Locum Tenens Helps Avoid Burnout in Hospital Medicine
October 6, 2015
At the end of residency, like many of us, I was offered an impressive number of jobs as both a hospitalist and an outpatient internist.
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Society of Hospital Medicine Website Boasts Resources, Guides
October 6, 2015
SHM’s website offers a wealth of downloadable guides and toolkits, authored by the national experts on topics like: End-of-life care; Opioid monitoring; Antibiotic resistance; Post-acute care; VTE; Pain management; and Coronary heart disease (CHD).
