Hospital Medicine News

Coordinated “huddles” with care teams reduced physical restraint events in one children’s hospital’s medical behavioral health unit, according to study findings published in Pediatrics.

Diagnostic stewardship, along with targeted prevention efforts and a testing and treatment clinical care pathway, reduced hospital-onset cases of Clostridioides difficile by more than 50% in a children’s hospital, researchers reported.

Older transgender and gender-diverse patients on Medicare were more likely to use the ED — particularly for mental health care — than cisgender beneficiaries, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Medication reconciliation is the process of creating the most accurate list possible of all medications a patient is taking and comparing that list against the physician’s orders at each transition of care.

The updated COVID-19 vaccines were 54% effective against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and offered protection against JN.1 and XBB viral lineages, according to early estimates published by the CDC.

Making an early switch to oral antibiotic therapy from IV therapy is safe and effective for patients with low-risk Staphylococcus aureus bloodstream infection, researchers determined.

The CDC issued an alert to health care providers in the United States last week to be on the lookout for measles after receiving reports of 23 confirmed cases between Dec. 1 and Jan. 23.

Patients with opioid use disorder, or OUD, who were treated with buprenorphine during an ED visit had greater odds of continued treatment engagement 30 days later, a study in JAMA Network Open showed.

A significant number of low-risk patients who visited the ED for acute pulmonary embolism were hospitalized despite evidence supporting outpatient management, according to a recent study.

Both social risk and social need increased the odds of ED use, according to a study published in JAMA Network Open.