Does Admission Unit Affect Inpatient Mortality?

As hospitals approach capacity, patients often are assigned beds in areas of the hospital away from the usual location of their primary general internal medicine or hospitalist team members. Do these off-unit patients have different outcomes than their counterparts on internal medicine wards?

In this 1-year retrospective cohort study at a large Canadian teaching hospital, researchers reviewed electronic health records of more than 3000 patients who were admitted to one of four clinical teaching teams. When admission numbers exceeded internal medicine ward bed capacity, patients were placed in beds on an off-service ward (short-stay unit, medicine subspecialty wards, neurology, or various surgical wards, each with their own nursing staffs and…