Date and Time
April 14, 2004
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Speaker
Mike Ong

Housestaff work-hour reduction mandates have forced residency programs to

change team structures to limit the workloads of medical residents and interns. However, there is little research on how resident workloads or variations in team structures influence patient outcomes.

Using a retrospective cohort of 5,754 patients admitted to a large academic

medical center's general internal medicine wards between July 1998 and June 2001, this study examines the effect of several variations in housestaff team structures on a combined outcome of 30-day readmission and death rates, length of stay, and total costs. During this time period, several variations were introduced; these variations include the total number of teams, the number of teams admitting per day, the number of interns on a team, and an overflow team. This study also examines the effect of daily workload, including individual team and overall service admissions and discharges, as well as individual team and overall service census. Findings to date will be discussed.

Michael Ong, MD, is a CHP/PCOR fellow in the VA's Ambulatory Care Practice and Research Training Program.