March 2010


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Treating HCAP is not a snap

Pop quiz: Do you know the guidelines for treating health care-associated pneumonia? And is your clinical practice in accordance with those guidelines? If the answer to either of those questions is no, you're not alone.

Act quickly and listen a lot

What to do when a patient wants to leave against medical advice.

There is a doctor in the ‘House’

Lisa Sanders, ACP Member, is a technical adviser on the T.V. show “House, M.D.”.

Practice airway access and PICC insertion at Internal Medicine 2010

New hands-on training opportunities are ideal for hospitalists.

Award-winning physician was meant for hospital medicine

Peter Nock, ACP Member, explains why hospital medicine is the perfect fit.

System catches codes before they're called

Mercy Hospital Anderson in Cincinnati used a scoring system to reduce the number of code blues called outside the ICU.

Letter from the Editor

When clinical guidelines aren't followed, it's tempting to think physicians either don't know them, or lack easy protocols to observe them. In the case of health care-associated pneumonia, however, there may be more to the story.

Bundled fee system can work

A reader responds to our cover story on bundled payments.

The fascinating foxglove

We were rounding on the hospital service when one of our patients, already hypotensive, went into atrial fibrillation. The most appropriate drug wound up being one with a long and illustrious history.

23 and thee

A medical student reflects on the implications of increased access to genetic information.

Inpatient medication: Too much information, or not enough?

A recent study showed that many inpatients don't know what medications they're given in the hospital.

Understanding and interpreting pulmonary artery catheter waveforms

To interpret the wedge tracing of a pulmonary artery catheter correctly, you need to understand your patient's respiratory physiology.

Documenting and billing for critical care services

To avoid rejection of critical care codes, physicians must be familiar with coding definitions, and documentation must reflect the professional services that support the codes.

Test yourself: Pneumonia

The following cases and commentary, which address pneumonia, are excerpted from ACP's Medical Knowledge Self-Assessment Program (MKSAP14).

In the News

Heart failure readmissions, and more.