A Pathway for Community-Acquired Pneumonia With Rapid Conversion to Oral Therapy Improves Health Care Value.

BACKGROUND: Evidence supports streamlined approaches for inpatients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) including early transition to oral antibiotics and shorter therapy. Uptake of these approaches is variable, and the best approaches to local implementation of infection-specific guidelines are unknown. Our objective was to evaluate the impact of a clinical decision support (CDS) tool linked with a clinical pathway on CAP care. METHODS: This is a retrospective, observational pre-post intervention study of inpatients with pneumonia admitted to a single academic medical center. Interventions were introduced in 3 sequential 6-month phases; Phase 1: education alone; Phase 2: education and a CDS-driven CAP pathway coupled with active antimicrobial stewardship and provider feedback; and Phase 3: education and a CDS-driven CAP pathway without active stewardship. The 12 months preceding the intervention were used as a baseline. Primary outcomes were length of intravenous antibiotic therapy and total length of antibiotic therapy. Clinical, process, and cost outcomes were also measured. RESULTS: The study included 1021 visits. Phase 2 was associated with significantly lower length of intravenous and total antibiotic therapy, higher procalcitonin lab utilization, and a 20% cost reduction compared with baseline. Phase 3 was associated with significantly lower length of intravenous antibiotic therapy and higher procalcitonin lab utilization compared with baseline. CONCLUSIONS: A CDS-driven CAP pathway supplemented by active antimicrobial stewardship review led to the most robust improvements in antibiotic use and decreased costs with similar clinical outcomes.

Comparison of Resident, Advanced Practice Clinician, and Hospitalist Teams in an Academic Medical Center: Association With Clinical Outcomes and Resource Utilization.

BACKGROUND: Academic medical centers have expanded their inpatient medicine services with advanced practice clinicians (APCs) or nonteaching hospitalists in response to patient volumes, residency work hour restrictions, and recently, COVID-19. Reports of clinical outcomes, cost, and resource utilization differ among inpatient team structures. OBJECTIVE: Directly compare outcomes among resident, APC, and solo hospitalist inpatient general medicine teams. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study using multivariable analysis adjusted for time of admission, interhospital transfer, and comorbidities that compares clinical outcomes, cost, and resource utilization. SUBJECTS: Patients 18 years or older discharged from an inpatient medicine service between July 2015 and July 2018 (N = 12,716). MAIN MEASURES: Length of stay (LOS), 30-day readmission, inpatient mortality, normalized total direct cost, discharge time, and consultation utilization. KEY RESULTS: Resident teams admitted fewer patients at night (32.0%; P < .001) than did APC (49.5%) and hospitalist (48.6%) teams. APCs received nearly 4% more outside transfer patients (P = .015). Hospitalists discharged patients 26 minutes earlier than did residents (mean hours after midnight [95% CI], 14.58 [14.44-14.72] vs 15.02 [14.97-15.08]). Adjusted consult utilization was 15% higher for APCs (adjusted mean consults per admission [95% CI], 1.00 [0.96-1.03]) and 8% higher for residents (0.93 [0.90-0.95]) than it was for hospitalists (0.85 [0.80-0.90]). No differences in LOS, readmission, mortality, or cost were observed between the teams. CONCLUSION: We observed similar costs, LOS, 30-day readmission, and mortality among hospitalist, APC, and resident teams. Our results suggest clinical outcomes are not significantly affected by team structure. The addition of APC or hospitalist teams represent safe and effective alternatives to traditional inpatient resident teams.

Impact of Hospitalist Team Structure on Patient-Reported Satisfaction with Physician Performance.

BACKGROUND: Patient experience is valuable because it reflects how patients perceive the care they receive within the healthcare system and is associated with clinical outcomes. Also, as part of the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (HVBP) program, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) rewards hospitals with financial incentives for patient experience as measured by the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. It is unclear how the addition of residents and advanced practice clinicians (APCs) to hospitalist-led inpatient teams affects patient satisfaction as measured by the HCAHPS and Press Ganey survey. OBJECTIVE: To compare patient satisfaction with hospitalists on resident, APC, and solo hospitalist teams measured by HCAHPS and Press Ganey physician performance domain survey results. DESIGN: Retrospective observational cohort study. PARTICIPANTS: All patients discharged from the Internal Medicine inpatient service between July 1, 2015, and July 1, 2018, who met HCAHPS survey eligibility criteria and completed a patient experience survey. MAIN MEASURES: HCAHPS and Press Ganey physician performance domain survey results. KEY RESULTS: No differences were observed in the selection of "top box" scores on the HCAHPS physician performance domain between resident, APC, and solo hospitalist teams. Adjusted Press Ganey physician performance domain survey results demonstrated significant differences between solo hospitalist and resident teams, with solo hospitalists having higher scores in three areas: time physician spent with you (4.58 vs. 4.38, p = 0.050); physician kept you informed (4.63 vs. 4.43, p = 0.047); and physician skill (4.80 vs. 4.63, p = 0.027). Solo hospitalists were perceived to have higher physician skill in comparison with hospitalist-APC teams (4.80 vs. 4.69, p = 0.042). CONCLUSION: While Press Ganey survey results suggest that patients have greater satisfaction with physicians on solo hospitalist teams, these differences were not observed on the HCAHPS physician performance survey domain, suggesting physician team structure does not impact HVBP incentive payments by CMS.

Brain area specific regulation of synaptic AMPA receptors by phosphorylation.

Regulation of synaptic AMPA receptors (AMPARs) is one of the key elements that allow the nervous system to adapt to changes in the sensory environment as well as for memory formation. One way to regulate AMPAR function is by reversible changes in the phosphorylation of its subunits. We recently reported that phosphorylation of the AMPAR subunit GluA1 (or GluR1) on serine-845 (S845) is a pre-requisite step for sensory experience-dependent homeostatic synaptic plasticity in the visual cortex. In particular, increasing GluA1-S845 phosphorylation upregulated cell surface and synaptic AMPAR levels. Here we report that this is rather specific to the visual cortex, in that increasing GluA1-S845 phosphorylation in hippocampal slices only increase cell surface expression, but not synaptic AMPAR function. Our results suggest that depending on the brain region divergent mechanisms may exist to regulate synaptic AMPAR function with phosphorylation.