Journal of general internal medicine
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Patient-physician sex discordance (when patient sex does not match physician sex) has been associated with reduced clinical rapport and adverse outcomes including post-operative mortality and unplanned hospital readmission. It remains unknown whether patient-physician sex discordance is associated with "before medically advised" hospital discharge (BMA discharge; commonly known as discharge "against medical advice"). ⋯ Patient-physician sex discordance was associated with a small increase in BMA discharge among male patients. This finding may reflect communication gaps, differences in the care provided by male and female physicians, discriminatory attitudes among male patients, or residual confounding. Improved communication and better treatment of pain and opioid withdrawal may reduce BMA discharge.
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Gender-affirming surgery (GAS) can be an important part of comprehensive care for transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals, but this care is not provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) because of an exclusion in the medical benefits package. ⋯ GAS receipt was low and there were important disparities by gender, sex, income, education, sexual orientation, and region. By removing the exclusion to providing GAS, VA could reduce barriers to accessing GAS and decrease disparities among TGD veterans.
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Low neighborhood socioeconomic status is associated with adverse health outcomes, but its association with health care costs in older adults is uncertain. ⋯ Total health care costs are higher for older community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries residing in the most socioeconomically deprived areas compared to the least deprived areas. This association was not significant after accounting for the higher prevalence of phenotypic frailty and functional impairments among residents of socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods.
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Case conferences, specifically those in which an unknown case is presented and discussed, are widely utilized in the delivery of medical education. However, the format of case conferences is not always optimized to engage and challenge audience members' clinical reasoning (CR). Based on the current conception of CR and our experience, we provide recommendations on how to better engineer case conferences to maximize CR education for learners at all levels through case selection, conference format, and intentional case construction.
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Most patients with mild or moderate COVID infection did not require hospital admission, but depending on their personal history, they needed medical supervision. In monitoring these patients in primary care, the design of specific surveillance programs was of great help. Between February 2021 and March 2022, EDCO program was designed in Tenerife, Spain, to telemonitor patients with COVID infection who had at least one vulnerability factor to reduce hospital admissions and mortality. ⋯ Vulnerable patients followed by a primary care programme had admission rates of 7.2% and mortality rates of 0.7%. Supervision of vulnerable patients by a Primary Care team was effective in the follow-up of these patients with complete resolution of symptoms in 91.7% of the cases.