Do hospitalists really improve patient outcomes?

Physician
December 18, 2017

Long continues the debate of what impact hospitalists have on inpatient outcomes. This issue has been playing out in the medical literature for 20 years, since the coining of the term in 1997. In the most recent iteration of the debate, a study was recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine entitled “Comparison of Hospital Resource Use and Outcomes Among Hospitalists, Primary Care Physicians, and Other Generalists.”

The study retrospectively evaluated health care …

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Do hospitalists really improve patient outcomes?

Important considerations in how we use advanced care planning documentation

Physician
July 17, 2017

There have been recent discussions in the lay media about a growing trend of litigation cases focused not on the “right to live,” but rather on the “right to die.” These cases have involved patients who received aggressive treatment, despite having documentation of their wishes not to receive such aggressive treatment. Although unsettling, it is not surprising that this issue has arisen, given the national conversations about the exorbitant cost …

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Important considerations in how we use advanced care planning documentation

How a hurricane brought a hospital team closer together

Physician
October 19, 2016

It turns out that South Carolina is having a busy hurricane season. Recently, Charleston County was under a mandatory evacuation in anticipation of Hurricane Matthew. All I-26 lanes were converted into westbound traffic, gas stations were running low on fuel, and the local Wal-Mart was out of bottled water. It was T-minus 3 days to the landfall of Hurricane Matthew, with very variable predictions on the trajectory, speed, and strength. …

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How a hurricane brought a hospital team closer together