Larry Beresford

A best-of-research plenary presentation at HM15 in National Harbor, Md., described a project to link physicians’ schedules to the electronic health record (EHR) in order to provide real-time, individualized performance feedback on key quality improvement and value metrics.

The abstract’s lead author, Victoria Valencia, MPH, a research data and project manager at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), explains that quality improvement priorities have driven feedback of quality metrics at the department level.

“Where I came in was to try to get the same quality metrics down to the level of the team,” she says. “We take data from our EPIC EHR, clean it up by removing outliers, merge it with our online scheduling program, and provide a robust visual presentation of individualized, real-time performance feedback to the clinical team.”

One example is counting the total number of phlebotomy “sticks” per day, per patient. Reporting this data helped to reduce the number of “sticks per day” by 20%, to 1.6 from 2.0. A similar approach is used for care transitions and the percentage of discharges with high-quality, after-visit summaries.

“The feedback is timely and actionable and allows the teams to address areas needing improvement,” Valencia says.

How have the doctors responded to this feedback?

“Our division is used to receiving quality feedback as part of an ongoing process that includes working meetings where the metrics are reviewed,” she says, adding that there hasn’t been pushback from the teams over these reports.

A best-of-research plenary presentation at HM15 in National Harbor, Md., described a project to link physicians’ schedules to the electronic health record (EHR) in order to provide real-time, individualized performance feedback on key quality improvement and value metrics.

The abstract’s lead author, Victoria Valencia, MPH, a research data and project manager at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), explains that quality improvement priorities have driven feedback of quality metrics at the department level.

“Where I came in was to try to get the same quality metrics down to the level of the team,” she says. “We take data from our EPIC EHR, clean it up by removing outliers, merge it with our online scheduling program, and provide a robust visual presentation of individualized, real-time performance feedback to the clinical team.”

One example is counting the total number of phlebotomy “sticks” per day, per patient. Reporting this data helped to reduce the number of “sticks per day” by 20%, to 1.6 from 2.0. A similar approach is used for care transitions and the percentage of discharges with high-quality, after-visit summaries.

“The feedback is timely and actionable and allows the teams to address areas needing improvement,” Valencia says.

How have the doctors responded to this feedback?

“Our division is used to receiving quality feedback as part of an ongoing process that includes working meetings where the metrics are reviewed,” she says, adding that there hasn’t been pushback from the teams over these reports.

A best-of-research plenary presentation at HM15 in National Harbor, Md., described a project to link physicians’ schedules to the electronic health record (EHR) in order to provide real-time, individualized performance feedback on key quality improvement and value metrics.

The abstract’s lead author, Victoria Valencia, MPH, a research data and project manager at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), explains that quality improvement priorities have driven feedback of quality metrics at the department level.

“Where I came in was to try to get the same quality metrics down to the level of the team,” she says. “We take data from our EPIC EHR, clean it up by removing outliers, merge it with our online scheduling program, and provide a robust visual presentation of individualized, real-time performance feedback to the clinical team.”

One example is counting the total number of phlebotomy “sticks” per day, per patient. Reporting this data helped to reduce the number of “sticks per day” by 20%, to 1.6 from 2.0. A similar approach is used for care transitions and the percentage of discharges with high-quality, after-visit summaries.

“The feedback is timely and actionable and allows the teams to address areas needing improvement,” Valencia says.

How have the doctors responded to this feedback?

“Our division is used to receiving quality feedback as part of an ongoing process that includes working meetings where the metrics are reviewed,” she says, adding that there hasn’t been pushback from the teams over these reports.

Research published earlier this year in the Journal of Hospital Medicine finds that rationales offered by physicians for overriding interruptive, computerized best practice alerts (BPAs) regarding whether or not to give blood transfusions vary widely, including specialty service protocolized behaviors, anticipation of surgical or procedural interventions, and imminent hospital transfers.

The electronic health record at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif., has an automated alert function to check reported hemoglobin level and trigger a pop-up reminder when a doctor orders a transfusion for a patient with a hemoglobin level of 9 or above—outside of the recognized guidelines—prompting the doctor to either abort the transfusion or provide a reason for the override, explains co-author Lisa Shieh, MD, PhD, FHM, medical director of quality in the department of medicine at Stanford.

“Our study was trying to understand why providers still transfuse, even when we provide just-in-time education on transfusion recommendations,” she says. “We can’t say that all of these orders are inappropriate. But, for many reasons, blood has harms and is costly.

“We want to convey an overall understanding about why this issue is important.”

Although a substantial number of transfusions continue outside of the recommended guidelines, Stanford has reduced its numbers significantly.

“I’m a big believer in clinical decision support … if it’s designed well and doesn’t add to alert fatigue,” Dr. Shieh says. “I think this BPA was effective in education and making people stop and think why they were ordering transfusions. Our next step will be to look at the outlier practices and maybe have a conversation with them, doctor to doctor.”

Stanford is looking at sepsis treatment as a next target.

Research published earlier this year in the Journal of Hospital Medicine finds that rationales offered by physicians for overriding interruptive, computerized best practice alerts (BPAs) regarding whether or not to give blood transfusions vary widely, including specialty service protocolized behaviors, anticipation of surgical or procedural interventions, and imminent hospital transfers.

The electronic health record at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif., has an automated alert function to check reported hemoglobin level and trigger a pop-up reminder when a doctor orders a transfusion for a patient with a hemoglobin level of 9 or above—outside of the recognized guidelines—prompting the doctor to either abort the transfusion or provide a reason for the override, explains co-author Lisa Shieh, MD, PhD, FHM, medical director of quality in the department of medicine at Stanford.

“Our study was trying to understand why providers still transfuse, even when we provide just-in-time education on transfusion recommendations,” she says. “We can’t say that all of these orders are inappropriate. But, for many reasons, blood has harms and is costly.

“We want to convey an overall understanding about why this issue is important.”

Although a substantial number of transfusions continue outside of the recommended guidelines, Stanford has reduced its numbers significantly.

“I’m a big believer in clinical decision support … if it’s designed well and doesn’t add to alert fatigue,” Dr. Shieh says. “I think this BPA was effective in education and making people stop and think why they were ordering transfusions. Our next step will be to look at the outlier practices and maybe have a conversation with them, doctor to doctor.”

Stanford is looking at sepsis treatment as a next target.

Research published earlier this year in the Journal of Hospital Medicine finds that rationales offered by physicians for overriding interruptive, computerized best practice alerts (BPAs) regarding whether or not to give blood transfusions vary widely, including specialty service protocolized behaviors, anticipation of surgical or procedural interventions, and imminent hospital transfers.

The electronic health record at Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, Calif., has an automated alert function to check reported hemoglobin level and trigger a pop-up reminder when a doctor orders a transfusion for a patient with a hemoglobin level of 9 or above—outside of the recognized guidelines—prompting the doctor to either abort the transfusion or provide a reason for the override, explains co-author Lisa Shieh, MD, PhD, FHM, medical director of quality in the department of medicine at Stanford.

“Our study was trying to understand why providers still transfuse, even when we provide just-in-time education on transfusion recommendations,” she says. “We can’t say that all of these orders are inappropriate. But, for many reasons, blood has harms and is costly.

“We want to convey an overall understanding about why this issue is important.”

Although a substantial number of transfusions continue outside of the recommended guidelines, Stanford has reduced its numbers significantly.

“I’m a big believer in clinical decision support … if it’s designed well and doesn’t add to alert fatigue,” Dr. Shieh says. “I think this BPA was effective in education and making people stop and think why they were ordering transfusions. Our next step will be to look at the outlier practices and maybe have a conversation with them, doctor to doctor.”

Stanford is looking at sepsis treatment as a next target.

Hospital design may not contribute to patients’ satisfaction with the care given by their hospital professionals, according to new research from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Newly built hospitals often emphasize patient-centered features like reduced noise, natural light, visitor-friendly facilities, well-designed rooms, and hotel-like amenities, note the authors, led by Zishan Siddiqui, MD, attending physician and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

When Hopkins moved a number of its hospital units to the sleek new Sheikh Zayed Tower in 2012, researchers used a pre-post design experiment to compare patient satisfaction in the newer, more pleasing surroundings via Press Ganey and HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey scores. Patients responded positively to the new environment, with significant improvement in facility-related satisfaction, but were able to distinguish that satisfaction from their ratings of their doctors and nurses, which were not impacted by the new environment.

“It is more likely that provider-level interventions will have a greater impact on provider level and overall satisfaction,” the authors conclude. “Hospital administrators should not use outdated facilities as an excuse for suboptimal provider satisfaction scores.”

Hospital design may not contribute to patients’ satisfaction with the care given by their hospital professionals, according to new research from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Newly built hospitals often emphasize patient-centered features like reduced noise, natural light, visitor-friendly facilities, well-designed rooms, and hotel-like amenities, note the authors, led by Zishan Siddiqui, MD, attending physician and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

When Hopkins moved a number of its hospital units to the sleek new Sheikh Zayed Tower in 2012, researchers used a pre-post design experiment to compare patient satisfaction in the newer, more pleasing surroundings via Press Ganey and HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey scores. Patients responded positively to the new environment, with significant improvement in facility-related satisfaction, but were able to distinguish that satisfaction from their ratings of their doctors and nurses, which were not impacted by the new environment.

“It is more likely that provider-level interventions will have a greater impact on provider level and overall satisfaction,” the authors conclude. “Hospital administrators should not use outdated facilities as an excuse for suboptimal provider satisfaction scores.”

Hospital design may not contribute to patients’ satisfaction with the care given by their hospital professionals, according to new research from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Newly built hospitals often emphasize patient-centered features like reduced noise, natural light, visitor-friendly facilities, well-designed rooms, and hotel-like amenities, note the authors, led by Zishan Siddiqui, MD, attending physician and assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins.

When Hopkins moved a number of its hospital units to the sleek new Sheikh Zayed Tower in 2012, researchers used a pre-post design experiment to compare patient satisfaction in the newer, more pleasing surroundings via Press Ganey and HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) survey scores. Patients responded positively to the new environment, with significant improvement in facility-related satisfaction, but were able to distinguish that satisfaction from their ratings of their doctors and nurses, which were not impacted by the new environment.

“It is more likely that provider-level interventions will have a greater impact on provider level and overall satisfaction,” the authors conclude. “Hospital administrators should not use outdated facilities as an excuse for suboptimal provider satisfaction scores.”

The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) and the Hospice & Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) recently published a list of performance measures to assess the quality of palliative and hospice patient care.

Refined over two years, the groups' Measuring What Matters recommendations [PDF] outline 10 clinically relevant measures to drive quality care. The list includes:

• Documenting patients’ preferences for life-sustaining treatments and their surrogate decision makers’ names;
• Screening patients for physical symptoms;
• Treating pain;
• Screening and managing dyspnea; and,
• Discussing patients' emotional and psychological needs.

"I'd say these things are relevant for hospitalists' patients, and for all seriously ill patients, whether or not a palliative care need has been identified," says Joe Rotella, MD, MBA, AAHPM's CMO and co-chair of the Measuring What Matters clinical user panel. The measures should make it possible to raise awareness about what constitutes quality of care for seriously ill patients and to compare quality between settings and between patients who receive palliative care and equally ill patients who do not, he notes.

The quality indicators, which have been reviewed by the National Quality Forum, focus on processes of providing palliative and hospice care and seek to achieve consistency in care quality among providers. For instance, do patients who screen positive for at least moderate pain receive treatments within 24 hours? Likewise, patients receiving hospice care should have a documented discussion of their spiritual concerns or of their preference not to have such a discussion, the recommendations state.

"It's worth looking at what really matters to these patients and maybe adapting a few measures for your hospital's quality improvement program," Dr. Rotella says.

Listen to our recent podcast on hospitalists and palliative care.

The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) and the Hospice & Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) recently published a list of performance measures to assess the quality of palliative and hospice patient care.

Refined over two years, the groups' Measuring What Matters recommendations [PDF] outline 10 clinically relevant measures to drive quality care. The list includes:

• Documenting patients’ preferences for life-sustaining treatments and their surrogate decision makers’ names;
• Screening patients for physical symptoms;
• Treating pain;
• Screening and managing dyspnea; and,
• Discussing patients' emotional and psychological needs.

"I'd say these things are relevant for hospitalists' patients, and for all seriously ill patients, whether or not a palliative care need has been identified," says Joe Rotella, MD, MBA, AAHPM's CMO and co-chair of the Measuring What Matters clinical user panel. The measures should make it possible to raise awareness about what constitutes quality of care for seriously ill patients and to compare quality between settings and between patients who receive palliative care and equally ill patients who do not, he notes.

The quality indicators, which have been reviewed by the National Quality Forum, focus on processes of providing palliative and hospice care and seek to achieve consistency in care quality among providers. For instance, do patients who screen positive for at least moderate pain receive treatments within 24 hours? Likewise, patients receiving hospice care should have a documented discussion of their spiritual concerns or of their preference not to have such a discussion, the recommendations state.

"It's worth looking at what really matters to these patients and maybe adapting a few measures for your hospital's quality improvement program," Dr. Rotella says.

Listen to our recent podcast on hospitalists and palliative care.

The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) and the Hospice & Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) recently published a list of performance measures to assess the quality of palliative and hospice patient care.

Refined over two years, the groups' Measuring What Matters recommendations [PDF] outline 10 clinically relevant measures to drive quality care. The list includes:

• Documenting patients’ preferences for life-sustaining treatments and their surrogate decision makers’ names;
• Screening patients for physical symptoms;
• Treating pain;
• Screening and managing dyspnea; and,
• Discussing patients' emotional and psychological needs.

"I'd say these things are relevant for hospitalists' patients, and for all seriously ill patients, whether or not a palliative care need has been identified," says Joe Rotella, MD, MBA, AAHPM's CMO and co-chair of the Measuring What Matters clinical user panel. The measures should make it possible to raise awareness about what constitutes quality of care for seriously ill patients and to compare quality between settings and between patients who receive palliative care and equally ill patients who do not, he notes.

The quality indicators, which have been reviewed by the National Quality Forum, focus on processes of providing palliative and hospice care and seek to achieve consistency in care quality among providers. For instance, do patients who screen positive for at least moderate pain receive treatments within 24 hours? Likewise, patients receiving hospice care should have a documented discussion of their spiritual concerns or of their preference not to have such a discussion, the recommendations state.

"It's worth looking at what really matters to these patients and maybe adapting a few measures for your hospital's quality improvement program," Dr. Rotella says.

Listen to our recent podcast on hospitalists and palliative care.

Listen to Daniel Hunt, MD, chief of the hospital medicine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, discuss his recent article titled “Perspectives” in the New England Journal of Medicine on consultation visits by primary care providers.

Listen to Daniel Hunt, MD, chief of the hospital medicine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, discuss his recent article titled “Perspectives” in the New England Journal of Medicine on consultation visits by primary care providers.

Listen to Daniel Hunt, MD, chief of the hospital medicine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, discuss his recent article titled “Perspectives” in the New England Journal of Medicine on consultation visits by primary care providers.

Amy Boutwell, MD, MPP, a hospitalist and founder of Collaborative Healthcare Strategies, talks about what clinicians can do to help improve care transitions based on her experience directing IHI’s STAAR Initiative (State-Action on Avoidable Re-hospitalizations).

Amy Boutwell, MD, MPP, a hospitalist and founder of Collaborative Healthcare Strategies, talks about what clinicians can do to help improve care transitions based on her experience directing IHI’s STAAR Initiative (State-Action on Avoidable Re-hospitalizations).

Amy Boutwell, MD, MPP, a hospitalist and founder of Collaborative Healthcare Strategies, talks about what clinicians can do to help improve care transitions based on her experience directing IHI’s STAAR Initiative (State-Action on Avoidable Re-hospitalizations).

Johns Hopkins hospitalist Eric Howell, MD, SFHM, discusses connections between SHM, hospitalist practices, handoffs, and successful care transitions.

Johns Hopkins hospitalist Eric Howell, MD, SFHM, discusses connections between SHM, hospitalist practices, handoffs, and successful care transitions.

Johns Hopkins hospitalist Eric Howell, MD, SFHM, discusses connections between SHM, hospitalist practices, handoffs, and successful care transitions.

Small, rural, and community-based hospitals face many of the same concerns about readmissions as large ones. James Baumgartner, MD, chief hospitalist at Essentia Health-St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Brainerd, Minn., population 13,517, was asked if he sees the readmissions issue playing out differently in rural settings.

“I don’t think so, and I’ve practiced in bigger cities,” he says. “For the past two years, we’ve had a team-based approach here, with a multidisciplinary committee meeting monthly to work on making transitions of care better.”

The recent adoption of joint rounding by hospitalists and nurses also makes a difference, he says. To ensure that patients can get post-discharge medical appointments when they need them, Dr. Baumgartner’s group approached local PCPs within the same health system.

“They responded by reserving at least one open slot at the start of every day for seeing our recently discharged patients,” he says.

Kristi Howell, RN, director of quality initiatives at Richland Memorial Hospital, a 65-bed acute care facility in Olney, Ill., population 8,631, says the trend in smaller and rural hospitals is moving toward more personalized patient care and the use of one-on-one transitional care coordinators.

“We have the advantage of being closer to our patients and providing a more personalized discharge plan than may be possible at a larger facility,” she says. Nevertheless, Howell and her colleagues are “deeply concerned about readmissions.”

“Physicians in this area experience difficulty with readmissions due to our rural patients’ lack of access to larger facilities and medical specialties,” she says. “Noncompliance is another problem, mostly due to lack of health literacy and financial resources. Of course, it is well known that the shortage of primary care doctors is a contributor to poorer health outcomes for rural residents.”

Randy Ferrance, DC, MD, FAAP, SFHM, medical director of the hospitalist service at 47-bed Riverside Tappahannock Hospital in Tappahannock, Va., population 2,393, says he’s “tried all sorts of things, with little impact on readmissions,” although his five-member groups’ readmission rate is “actually low compared with the national average.”

“We make appointments for the first week after discharge,” he says. “We’re small enough that we can call the PCP. We know them. We all belong to the same medical group.”

Dr. Ferrance covers shifts in the ED on occasion. He says some patients in the community prefer to get their medical care at the ED. “And in the ED, if they don’t look well, they get admitted,” he says.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.

Small, rural, and community-based hospitals face many of the same concerns about readmissions as large ones. James Baumgartner, MD, chief hospitalist at Essentia Health-St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Brainerd, Minn., population 13,517, was asked if he sees the readmissions issue playing out differently in rural settings.

“I don’t think so, and I’ve practiced in bigger cities,” he says. “For the past two years, we’ve had a team-based approach here, with a multidisciplinary committee meeting monthly to work on making transitions of care better.”

The recent adoption of joint rounding by hospitalists and nurses also makes a difference, he says. To ensure that patients can get post-discharge medical appointments when they need them, Dr. Baumgartner’s group approached local PCPs within the same health system.

“They responded by reserving at least one open slot at the start of every day for seeing our recently discharged patients,” he says.

Kristi Howell, RN, director of quality initiatives at Richland Memorial Hospital, a 65-bed acute care facility in Olney, Ill., population 8,631, says the trend in smaller and rural hospitals is moving toward more personalized patient care and the use of one-on-one transitional care coordinators.

“We have the advantage of being closer to our patients and providing a more personalized discharge plan than may be possible at a larger facility,” she says. Nevertheless, Howell and her colleagues are “deeply concerned about readmissions.”

“Physicians in this area experience difficulty with readmissions due to our rural patients’ lack of access to larger facilities and medical specialties,” she says. “Noncompliance is another problem, mostly due to lack of health literacy and financial resources. Of course, it is well known that the shortage of primary care doctors is a contributor to poorer health outcomes for rural residents.”

Randy Ferrance, DC, MD, FAAP, SFHM, medical director of the hospitalist service at 47-bed Riverside Tappahannock Hospital in Tappahannock, Va., population 2,393, says he’s “tried all sorts of things, with little impact on readmissions,” although his five-member groups’ readmission rate is “actually low compared with the national average.”

“We make appointments for the first week after discharge,” he says. “We’re small enough that we can call the PCP. We know them. We all belong to the same medical group.”

Dr. Ferrance covers shifts in the ED on occasion. He says some patients in the community prefer to get their medical care at the ED. “And in the ED, if they don’t look well, they get admitted,” he says.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.

Small, rural, and community-based hospitals face many of the same concerns about readmissions as large ones. James Baumgartner, MD, chief hospitalist at Essentia Health-St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Brainerd, Minn., population 13,517, was asked if he sees the readmissions issue playing out differently in rural settings.

“I don’t think so, and I’ve practiced in bigger cities,” he says. “For the past two years, we’ve had a team-based approach here, with a multidisciplinary committee meeting monthly to work on making transitions of care better.”

The recent adoption of joint rounding by hospitalists and nurses also makes a difference, he says. To ensure that patients can get post-discharge medical appointments when they need them, Dr. Baumgartner’s group approached local PCPs within the same health system.

“They responded by reserving at least one open slot at the start of every day for seeing our recently discharged patients,” he says.

Kristi Howell, RN, director of quality initiatives at Richland Memorial Hospital, a 65-bed acute care facility in Olney, Ill., population 8,631, says the trend in smaller and rural hospitals is moving toward more personalized patient care and the use of one-on-one transitional care coordinators.

“We have the advantage of being closer to our patients and providing a more personalized discharge plan than may be possible at a larger facility,” she says. Nevertheless, Howell and her colleagues are “deeply concerned about readmissions.”

“Physicians in this area experience difficulty with readmissions due to our rural patients’ lack of access to larger facilities and medical specialties,” she says. “Noncompliance is another problem, mostly due to lack of health literacy and financial resources. Of course, it is well known that the shortage of primary care doctors is a contributor to poorer health outcomes for rural residents.”

Randy Ferrance, DC, MD, FAAP, SFHM, medical director of the hospitalist service at 47-bed Riverside Tappahannock Hospital in Tappahannock, Va., population 2,393, says he’s “tried all sorts of things, with little impact on readmissions,” although his five-member groups’ readmission rate is “actually low compared with the national average.”

“We make appointments for the first week after discharge,” he says. “We’re small enough that we can call the PCP. We know them. We all belong to the same medical group.”

Dr. Ferrance covers shifts in the ED on occasion. He says some patients in the community prefer to get their medical care at the ED. “And in the ED, if they don’t look well, they get admitted,” he says.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.

Hospital medicine leaders have long acknowledged the disconnects in medical care that occur at discharge. The demand for greater efficiency in hospital-based care is what has driven the hospitalist movement and its inexorable growth the past two decades.

Efforts to overcome discontinuity of care have included more timely discharge summaries, phone calls to primary care physicians (PCPs) and specialists at the time of discharge, and hospitalist-staffed post-discharge clinics. In a 2002 article, Robert Wachter, MD, MHM, and Steven Pantilat, MD, SFHM, of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), suggested that PCPs make continuity visits to the hospital once or twice to maintain their involvement and help coordinate the care of their patients.¹

A new “Perspectives” piece in The New England Journal of Medicine proposes that PCPs act as medical consultants to the hospitalist team while their patients are in the hospital, making a consulting visit “within 12 to 18 hours after admission to provide support and continuity to them and their families.”² Authors Allan Goroll, MD, MACP, and Daniel Hunt, MD, propose that the PCP be asked to write a succinct consultation note in the hospital chart, highlighting key elements of the patient’s history and recent tests—with the goal of complementing and informing the hospitalist’s admission workup and care plan—while being paid as a consultant.

“It’s a fairly straightforward proposal,” says Dr. Hunt, chief of the hospital medicine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. “We’re not looking for PCPs to take care of every aspect of inpatient care. It’s really just to bring in the PCP’s expertise and nuanced understanding of the patient at a vulnerable time for the patient.”

The idea might seem a little ironic given the fact that hospitalists were created in part to relieve busy PCPs from having to visit the hospital. But some see it as a way forward.

“I wouldn’t call it a step backward,” says Joseph Ming Wah Li, MD, SFHM, FACP, director of the hospital medicine program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston and a former SHM president. “Is it feasible? Realistically, in most settings today, I don’t think it is. But I would love it. I don’t really know enough about the patients I take care of in the hospital.”

The Barrier of “Not Enough Time”

Dr. Hunt says the biggest barrier to this proposal is the time that PCPs would have to carve out to make physical trips to the hospital.

“That ultimately comes down to reimbursement,” he says.

MGH, which is well situated with medical practices in or near the main hospital building, has piloted an approach similar to the NEJM proposal with a primary care group that comes in to see its patients in the first day or two after admission and then again on the day before discharge.

“We made a commitment, as hospitalists, to communicate directly by phone with the PCPs. That commitment lasted about a week, and then we quickly converted to a daily e-mail. That works, because both parties are communicating substantial information in these e-mails.”–Dr. Hunt

“But they are essentially doing it out of the goodness of their hearts,” Dr. Hunt explains. “What we’ve seen from this experiment are much better transitions of care and much better decision making around big decisions, such as end-of-life care or surgical interventions.”

Hospitalists at MGH and the PCPs spent a year and a half talking through the specifics of how their arrangement would work.

“We made a commitment, as hospitalists, to communicate directly by phone with the PCPs,” he says. “That commitment lasted about a week, and then we quickly converted to a daily e-mail. That works, because both parties are communicating substantial information in these e-mails.”

Dr. Hunt says the key is recognizing the “huge” value PCPs bring to an inpatient stay. And, while physical trips to the hospital or e-mails might not work for every hospitalist or PCP, the connecting of information and insight is often worth the investment.

“There are other ways [to communicate], such as video conferencing and Skype, where doctors could participate more efficiently in the care of their hospitalized patients,” he says, adding that hospitalists should reach out to PCPs, both when a patient enters the hospital and as part of a larger discussion about how to improve communication and continuity of care.

The PCP Perspective

Boston internist Gila Kriegel, MD, might seem like a throwback. She says she wants to visit her patients when they are in the hospital, if at all possible. In fact, hospitalists in Boston say Dr. Kriegel allows them to take care of her patients “almost begrudgingly.”

“She is so involved in their care,” Dr. Li says. “She tells me everything I need to know about them. She’d be here every day if she weren’t juggling other responsibilities.”

A PCP since 1986, Dr. Kriegel’s story illustrates the complexities of an evolving healthcare system. She’s based in an academic setting, which she calls a “kind of ivory tower.”

“But I was fortunate in 1989, after my first son was born and I went part-time, to have a colleague who offered to see my inpatients on the days I wasn’t working,” she explains. “Then a woman colleague of mine also went part-time, and we agreed to cross-cover for each other.”

Eventually, Dr. Kriegel was approached by Dr. Li’s hospitalist group, which offered to manage her hospitalized patients.

“For the first six months to a year, I’d go see my patients in the hospital on a social visit. I’d even write notes in the chart, until they told me, ‘You are not responsible for the care in the hospital. The hospitalist is,’” she recalls. “For me, it was a big loss to stop going to the hospital. Most PCPs I know like seeing their patients through the course of the illness.”

Then again, she also admits how difficult it is to see her patients in the hospital.

Still, she managed to stay connected. “When I stopped going to see my patients, I asked the hospital staff to give me the patient’s bedside phone number, and I’d call them in the hospital to let them know I was up on what was happening,” she says.

Technology, coincidentally, inserted a barrier: She wasn’t able to access hospitalists’ daily notes in the BIDMC electronic health records. That’s when Dr. Kriegel began e-mailing the hospitalists. In the end, even that form of communication wasn’t fully satisfying.

“The current system requires me to do the outreach,” she explains. “If you ask hospitalists about communication, they’d say they’re already doing it. But a discharge summary isn’t the same as knowing in real time what’s happening with my patients.”

“I’d love to make virtual visits to the patient in the hospital, by phone or computer link—even more so if I could get paid for my time. But I want to stay involved.”

Ripe for Innovation

Dr. Wachter, chief of hospital medicine at UCSF, who writes an HM-focused blog [wachtersworld.com], says the continuity visit is a good idea but also understands the difficulties in the new healthcare paradigm.

“It’s not easy to work out the logistics, and it depends on the geography,” he says. “We also need to be considering telemedicine. But something to enhance continuity is ripe for innovation.”

He says consultation or continuity visits offer ways to improve care with a relatively small expenditure.

“We still see a few PCPs come in when their patients are hospitalized. It’s very reassuring to their patients,” he says. “For the complicated cases where an ongoing relationship matters, those encounters are fabulous.”

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.

References

1. Goroll AH, Hunt DP. Bridging the hospitalist-primary care divide through collaborative care. New Engl J Med. 2015;372(4):308-309.
2. Wachter RM, Pantilat SZ. The “continuity visit” and the hospitalist model of care. Dis Mon. 2002;48(4):267-272.

Hospital medicine leaders have long acknowledged the disconnects in medical care that occur at discharge. The demand for greater efficiency in hospital-based care is what has driven the hospitalist movement and its inexorable growth the past two decades.

Efforts to overcome discontinuity of care have included more timely discharge summaries, phone calls to primary care physicians (PCPs) and specialists at the time of discharge, and hospitalist-staffed post-discharge clinics. In a 2002 article, Robert Wachter, MD, MHM, and Steven Pantilat, MD, SFHM, of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), suggested that PCPs make continuity visits to the hospital once or twice to maintain their involvement and help coordinate the care of their patients.¹

A new “Perspectives” piece in The New England Journal of Medicine proposes that PCPs act as medical consultants to the hospitalist team while their patients are in the hospital, making a consulting visit “within 12 to 18 hours after admission to provide support and continuity to them and their families.”² Authors Allan Goroll, MD, MACP, and Daniel Hunt, MD, propose that the PCP be asked to write a succinct consultation note in the hospital chart, highlighting key elements of the patient’s history and recent tests—with the goal of complementing and informing the hospitalist’s admission workup and care plan—while being paid as a consultant.

“It’s a fairly straightforward proposal,” says Dr. Hunt, chief of the hospital medicine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. “We’re not looking for PCPs to take care of every aspect of inpatient care. It’s really just to bring in the PCP’s expertise and nuanced understanding of the patient at a vulnerable time for the patient.”

The idea might seem a little ironic given the fact that hospitalists were created in part to relieve busy PCPs from having to visit the hospital. But some see it as a way forward.

“I wouldn’t call it a step backward,” says Joseph Ming Wah Li, MD, SFHM, FACP, director of the hospital medicine program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston and a former SHM president. “Is it feasible? Realistically, in most settings today, I don’t think it is. But I would love it. I don’t really know enough about the patients I take care of in the hospital.”

The Barrier of “Not Enough Time”

Dr. Hunt says the biggest barrier to this proposal is the time that PCPs would have to carve out to make physical trips to the hospital.

“That ultimately comes down to reimbursement,” he says.

MGH, which is well situated with medical practices in or near the main hospital building, has piloted an approach similar to the NEJM proposal with a primary care group that comes in to see its patients in the first day or two after admission and then again on the day before discharge.

“We made a commitment, as hospitalists, to communicate directly by phone with the PCPs. That commitment lasted about a week, and then we quickly converted to a daily e-mail. That works, because both parties are communicating substantial information in these e-mails.”–Dr. Hunt

“But they are essentially doing it out of the goodness of their hearts,” Dr. Hunt explains. “What we’ve seen from this experiment are much better transitions of care and much better decision making around big decisions, such as end-of-life care or surgical interventions.”

Hospitalists at MGH and the PCPs spent a year and a half talking through the specifics of how their arrangement would work.

“We made a commitment, as hospitalists, to communicate directly by phone with the PCPs,” he says. “That commitment lasted about a week, and then we quickly converted to a daily e-mail. That works, because both parties are communicating substantial information in these e-mails.”

Dr. Hunt says the key is recognizing the “huge” value PCPs bring to an inpatient stay. And, while physical trips to the hospital or e-mails might not work for every hospitalist or PCP, the connecting of information and insight is often worth the investment.

“There are other ways [to communicate], such as video conferencing and Skype, where doctors could participate more efficiently in the care of their hospitalized patients,” he says, adding that hospitalists should reach out to PCPs, both when a patient enters the hospital and as part of a larger discussion about how to improve communication and continuity of care.

The PCP Perspective

Boston internist Gila Kriegel, MD, might seem like a throwback. She says she wants to visit her patients when they are in the hospital, if at all possible. In fact, hospitalists in Boston say Dr. Kriegel allows them to take care of her patients “almost begrudgingly.”

“She is so involved in their care,” Dr. Li says. “She tells me everything I need to know about them. She’d be here every day if she weren’t juggling other responsibilities.”

A PCP since 1986, Dr. Kriegel’s story illustrates the complexities of an evolving healthcare system. She’s based in an academic setting, which she calls a “kind of ivory tower.”

“But I was fortunate in 1989, after my first son was born and I went part-time, to have a colleague who offered to see my inpatients on the days I wasn’t working,” she explains. “Then a woman colleague of mine also went part-time, and we agreed to cross-cover for each other.”

Eventually, Dr. Kriegel was approached by Dr. Li’s hospitalist group, which offered to manage her hospitalized patients.

“For the first six months to a year, I’d go see my patients in the hospital on a social visit. I’d even write notes in the chart, until they told me, ‘You are not responsible for the care in the hospital. The hospitalist is,’” she recalls. “For me, it was a big loss to stop going to the hospital. Most PCPs I know like seeing their patients through the course of the illness.”

Then again, she also admits how difficult it is to see her patients in the hospital.

Still, she managed to stay connected. “When I stopped going to see my patients, I asked the hospital staff to give me the patient’s bedside phone number, and I’d call them in the hospital to let them know I was up on what was happening,” she says.

Technology, coincidentally, inserted a barrier: She wasn’t able to access hospitalists’ daily notes in the BIDMC electronic health records. That’s when Dr. Kriegel began e-mailing the hospitalists. In the end, even that form of communication wasn’t fully satisfying.

“The current system requires me to do the outreach,” she explains. “If you ask hospitalists about communication, they’d say they’re already doing it. But a discharge summary isn’t the same as knowing in real time what’s happening with my patients.”

“I’d love to make virtual visits to the patient in the hospital, by phone or computer link—even more so if I could get paid for my time. But I want to stay involved.”

Ripe for Innovation

Dr. Wachter, chief of hospital medicine at UCSF, who writes an HM-focused blog [wachtersworld.com], says the continuity visit is a good idea but also understands the difficulties in the new healthcare paradigm.

“It’s not easy to work out the logistics, and it depends on the geography,” he says. “We also need to be considering telemedicine. But something to enhance continuity is ripe for innovation.”

He says consultation or continuity visits offer ways to improve care with a relatively small expenditure.

“We still see a few PCPs come in when their patients are hospitalized. It’s very reassuring to their patients,” he says. “For the complicated cases where an ongoing relationship matters, those encounters are fabulous.”

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.

References

1. Goroll AH, Hunt DP. Bridging the hospitalist-primary care divide through collaborative care. New Engl J Med. 2015;372(4):308-309.
2. Wachter RM, Pantilat SZ. The “continuity visit” and the hospitalist model of care. Dis Mon. 2002;48(4):267-272.

Hospital medicine leaders have long acknowledged the disconnects in medical care that occur at discharge. The demand for greater efficiency in hospital-based care is what has driven the hospitalist movement and its inexorable growth the past two decades.

Efforts to overcome discontinuity of care have included more timely discharge summaries, phone calls to primary care physicians (PCPs) and specialists at the time of discharge, and hospitalist-staffed post-discharge clinics. In a 2002 article, Robert Wachter, MD, MHM, and Steven Pantilat, MD, SFHM, of the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), suggested that PCPs make continuity visits to the hospital once or twice to maintain their involvement and help coordinate the care of their patients.¹

A new “Perspectives” piece in The New England Journal of Medicine proposes that PCPs act as medical consultants to the hospitalist team while their patients are in the hospital, making a consulting visit “within 12 to 18 hours after admission to provide support and continuity to them and their families.”² Authors Allan Goroll, MD, MACP, and Daniel Hunt, MD, propose that the PCP be asked to write a succinct consultation note in the hospital chart, highlighting key elements of the patient’s history and recent tests—with the goal of complementing and informing the hospitalist’s admission workup and care plan—while being paid as a consultant.

“It’s a fairly straightforward proposal,” says Dr. Hunt, chief of the hospital medicine unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. “We’re not looking for PCPs to take care of every aspect of inpatient care. It’s really just to bring in the PCP’s expertise and nuanced understanding of the patient at a vulnerable time for the patient.”

The idea might seem a little ironic given the fact that hospitalists were created in part to relieve busy PCPs from having to visit the hospital. But some see it as a way forward.

“I wouldn’t call it a step backward,” says Joseph Ming Wah Li, MD, SFHM, FACP, director of the hospital medicine program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) in Boston and a former SHM president. “Is it feasible? Realistically, in most settings today, I don’t think it is. But I would love it. I don’t really know enough about the patients I take care of in the hospital.”

The Barrier of “Not Enough Time”

Dr. Hunt says the biggest barrier to this proposal is the time that PCPs would have to carve out to make physical trips to the hospital.

“That ultimately comes down to reimbursement,” he says.

MGH, which is well situated with medical practices in or near the main hospital building, has piloted an approach similar to the NEJM proposal with a primary care group that comes in to see its patients in the first day or two after admission and then again on the day before discharge.

“We made a commitment, as hospitalists, to communicate directly by phone with the PCPs. That commitment lasted about a week, and then we quickly converted to a daily e-mail. That works, because both parties are communicating substantial information in these e-mails.”–Dr. Hunt

“But they are essentially doing it out of the goodness of their hearts,” Dr. Hunt explains. “What we’ve seen from this experiment are much better transitions of care and much better decision making around big decisions, such as end-of-life care or surgical interventions.”

Hospitalists at MGH and the PCPs spent a year and a half talking through the specifics of how their arrangement would work.

“We made a commitment, as hospitalists, to communicate directly by phone with the PCPs,” he says. “That commitment lasted about a week, and then we quickly converted to a daily e-mail. That works, because both parties are communicating substantial information in these e-mails.”

Dr. Hunt says the key is recognizing the “huge” value PCPs bring to an inpatient stay. And, while physical trips to the hospital or e-mails might not work for every hospitalist or PCP, the connecting of information and insight is often worth the investment.

“There are other ways [to communicate], such as video conferencing and Skype, where doctors could participate more efficiently in the care of their hospitalized patients,” he says, adding that hospitalists should reach out to PCPs, both when a patient enters the hospital and as part of a larger discussion about how to improve communication and continuity of care.

The PCP Perspective

Boston internist Gila Kriegel, MD, might seem like a throwback. She says she wants to visit her patients when they are in the hospital, if at all possible. In fact, hospitalists in Boston say Dr. Kriegel allows them to take care of her patients “almost begrudgingly.”

“She is so involved in their care,” Dr. Li says. “She tells me everything I need to know about them. She’d be here every day if she weren’t juggling other responsibilities.”

A PCP since 1986, Dr. Kriegel’s story illustrates the complexities of an evolving healthcare system. She’s based in an academic setting, which she calls a “kind of ivory tower.”

“But I was fortunate in 1989, after my first son was born and I went part-time, to have a colleague who offered to see my inpatients on the days I wasn’t working,” she explains. “Then a woman colleague of mine also went part-time, and we agreed to cross-cover for each other.”

Eventually, Dr. Kriegel was approached by Dr. Li’s hospitalist group, which offered to manage her hospitalized patients.

“For the first six months to a year, I’d go see my patients in the hospital on a social visit. I’d even write notes in the chart, until they told me, ‘You are not responsible for the care in the hospital. The hospitalist is,’” she recalls. “For me, it was a big loss to stop going to the hospital. Most PCPs I know like seeing their patients through the course of the illness.”

Then again, she also admits how difficult it is to see her patients in the hospital.

Still, she managed to stay connected. “When I stopped going to see my patients, I asked the hospital staff to give me the patient’s bedside phone number, and I’d call them in the hospital to let them know I was up on what was happening,” she says.

Technology, coincidentally, inserted a barrier: She wasn’t able to access hospitalists’ daily notes in the BIDMC electronic health records. That’s when Dr. Kriegel began e-mailing the hospitalists. In the end, even that form of communication wasn’t fully satisfying.

“The current system requires me to do the outreach,” she explains. “If you ask hospitalists about communication, they’d say they’re already doing it. But a discharge summary isn’t the same as knowing in real time what’s happening with my patients.”

“I’d love to make virtual visits to the patient in the hospital, by phone or computer link—even more so if I could get paid for my time. But I want to stay involved.”

Ripe for Innovation

Dr. Wachter, chief of hospital medicine at UCSF, who writes an HM-focused blog [wachtersworld.com], says the continuity visit is a good idea but also understands the difficulties in the new healthcare paradigm.

“It’s not easy to work out the logistics, and it depends on the geography,” he says. “We also need to be considering telemedicine. But something to enhance continuity is ripe for innovation.”

He says consultation or continuity visits offer ways to improve care with a relatively small expenditure.

“We still see a few PCPs come in when their patients are hospitalized. It’s very reassuring to their patients,” he says. “For the complicated cases where an ongoing relationship matters, those encounters are fabulous.”

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.

References

1. Goroll AH, Hunt DP. Bridging the hospitalist-primary care divide through collaborative care. New Engl J Med. 2015;372(4):308-309.
2. Wachter RM, Pantilat SZ. The “continuity visit” and the hospitalist model of care. Dis Mon. 2002;48(4):267-272.

Research published online in the Journal of Hospital Medicine shows how quality improvement incorporating Lean Six Sigma, rigorous, problem-focused process improvement methodologies, improved pediatric hospital discharge times. Michael J. Beck, MD, FAAP, SSGB, chief of the division of pediatric hospital medicine at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital in Pa., and Kirk Gosik of the department of public health sciences at Penn State Hershey College of Medicine assessed the impact of these methods on times from placement of discharge orders to discharge from the hospital, along with secondary outcomes of length of stay and readmissions rates.

“In our hospital, we did not have enough beds for what we were being asked to accomplish,” Dr. Beck says. “The process and structure of going through rounds and discharging patients wasn’t working. Based on a lot of calls from the ER, we decided to try a one-month pilot of restructuring the daily rounds to improve throughput.”

Reengineering included reallocating staff and creating a standardized work flow and discharge checklist. The rounding team was split into two smaller teams, with patients planned for discharge that day seen first and the necessary discharge paperwork entered into the electronic health record during the rounding.

The new process resulted in significantly faster times for order entry and for actual patient discharge, with a larger proportion of patients discharged before noon and before 2 p.m. The project has continued, using a PDSA (plan/do/study/act) process to advance and consolidate its gains. It appears to be sustainable, Dr. Beck says, and 13 months of data were to be presented as an abstract at HM15 in National Harbor, Md.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.

Research published online in the Journal of Hospital Medicine shows how quality improvement incorporating Lean Six Sigma, rigorous, problem-focused process improvement methodologies, improved pediatric hospital discharge times. Michael J. Beck, MD, FAAP, SSGB, chief of the division of pediatric hospital medicine at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital in Pa., and Kirk Gosik of the department of public health sciences at Penn State Hershey College of Medicine assessed the impact of these methods on times from placement of discharge orders to discharge from the hospital, along with secondary outcomes of length of stay and readmissions rates.

“In our hospital, we did not have enough beds for what we were being asked to accomplish,” Dr. Beck says. “The process and structure of going through rounds and discharging patients wasn’t working. Based on a lot of calls from the ER, we decided to try a one-month pilot of restructuring the daily rounds to improve throughput.”

Reengineering included reallocating staff and creating a standardized work flow and discharge checklist. The rounding team was split into two smaller teams, with patients planned for discharge that day seen first and the necessary discharge paperwork entered into the electronic health record during the rounding.

The new process resulted in significantly faster times for order entry and for actual patient discharge, with a larger proportion of patients discharged before noon and before 2 p.m. The project has continued, using a PDSA (plan/do/study/act) process to advance and consolidate its gains. It appears to be sustainable, Dr. Beck says, and 13 months of data were to be presented as an abstract at HM15 in National Harbor, Md.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.

Research published online in the Journal of Hospital Medicine shows how quality improvement incorporating Lean Six Sigma, rigorous, problem-focused process improvement methodologies, improved pediatric hospital discharge times. Michael J. Beck, MD, FAAP, SSGB, chief of the division of pediatric hospital medicine at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital in Pa., and Kirk Gosik of the department of public health sciences at Penn State Hershey College of Medicine assessed the impact of these methods on times from placement of discharge orders to discharge from the hospital, along with secondary outcomes of length of stay and readmissions rates.

“In our hospital, we did not have enough beds for what we were being asked to accomplish,” Dr. Beck says. “The process and structure of going through rounds and discharging patients wasn’t working. Based on a lot of calls from the ER, we decided to try a one-month pilot of restructuring the daily rounds to improve throughput.”

Reengineering included reallocating staff and creating a standardized work flow and discharge checklist. The rounding team was split into two smaller teams, with patients planned for discharge that day seen first and the necessary discharge paperwork entered into the electronic health record during the rounding.

The new process resulted in significantly faster times for order entry and for actual patient discharge, with a larger proportion of patients discharged before noon and before 2 p.m. The project has continued, using a PDSA (plan/do/study/act) process to advance and consolidate its gains. It appears to be sustainable, Dr. Beck says, and 13 months of data were to be presented as an abstract at HM15 in National Harbor, Md.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in Alameda, Calif.