Journal of general internal medicine
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Health services made many changes quickly in response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Many more are being made. ⋯ We draw on previous reviews about the advantages and disadvantages of combining these two domains of knowledge and practice. We describe a generic digitally assisted rapid cycle testing (DA-RCT) approach that combines elements of each in order to better describe a change, monitor outcomes, and make adjustments to the change when implemented in a dynamic environment.
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Multicenter Study
Estimation of Admission D-dimer Cut-off Value to Predict Venous Thrombotic Events in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients: Analysis of the SEMI-COVID-19 Registry.
Venous thrombotic events (VTE) are frequent in COVID-19, and elevated plasma D-dimer (pDd) and dyspnea are common in both entities. ⋯ In hospitalized patients with COVID-19, a pDd value greater than 3.0 μg/ml can be considered to screen VTE and to consider full-dose anticoagulation.
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Medical centers across the country have had to rapidly adapt clinician staffing strategies to accommodate large influxes of patients with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). ⋯ These findings provide guidance for inpatient leaders seeking to identify sustainable practices for COVID-19 inpatient workforce planning.
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Improving accuracy of identification of COVID-19-related deaths is essential to public health surveillance and research. The verbal autopsy, an established strategy involving an interview with a decedent's caregiver or witness using a semi-structured questionnaire, may improve accurate counting of COVID-19-related deaths. ⋯ The VAIC and a death adjudication protocol using it may improve accuracy in identifying COVID-19-related deaths.
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The opioid epidemic is widely recognized as a legislative priority, but there is substantial variation in state adoption of evidence-based policy. State legislators' use of social media to disseminate information and to indicate support for specific initiatives continues to grow and may reflect legislators' openness to opioid-related policy change. ⋯ The volume of opioid-related social media posts by US state legislators between 2014 and 2019 is associated with state-level overdose mortality, but the content across parties is significantly different. Democrats' and Republicans' social media posts may reflect growing partisanship regarding how best to address the overdose epidemic.