Practice Management
- New CCJM faces and features
Hospitalist James Pile, MD, and nephrologist George Thomas, MD, join the Journal staff as deputy editors.
- Providing comfort: Caring for patients who wish to die in their home country
The authors offer a framework for providing equitable care to terminally ill patients who seek the comfort of dying at home.
- Perspectives on travel and healthcare
Further guidelines are needed to address the challenges faced by patients traveling to receive medical care away from their home country or returning to their home country to die.
Artificial intelligence in clinical practice: A look at ChatGPTArtificial intelligence is developing rapidly, but caution is needed when interpreting results from studies in clinical settings involving general-purpose platforms like ChatGPT.
- Test ordering: Balancing the good for the many with the good for the one
Three articles this month address how we order clinical tests, one on the question of treating the patient with asymptomatic bacteriuria, the others on the advantages and disadvantages of standing orders for “daily labs” for inpatients.
- Should ‘daily labs’ be a quality priority in hospital medicine?
Evidence shows that unnecessary daily testing is only a minor contributor to anemia and healthcare costs for most inpatients. The effect on patient experience has not been definitively established.
- Laboratory stewardship should be a priority in every hospital
Considerations include indirect costs, downstream testing or other workup based on minor abnormalities uncovered during daily testing, and shortages in staff and supplies.
- There should be more GOLD in the EMR
We can do better at making the clinical note a useful tool for communication in the electronic medical record.
- The underappreciated role of documentation in improving COPD care
Despite the importance of providing guideline-concordant care, there are still barriers to implementing evidence-based recommendations in providing care for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
- Does my hospitalized patient need an NPO-after-midnight order preoperatively?
The following article in the February 2022 issue contained an error: Chapman T, Sinz E, McGillen B. Does my hospitalized patient need an NPO-after-midnight order preoperatively? Cleve Clin J Med 2022; 89(2):69–70. doi:10.3949/ccjm.89a.21061