The Effect of Geographic Cohorting of Inpatient Teaching Services on Patient Outcomes and Resident Experience

Background Geographic cohorting is a hospital admission structure in which every patient on a given physician team is admitted to a dedicated hospital unit. Little is known about the long-term impact of this admission structure on patient outcomes and resident satisfaction. Objective To evaluate the effect of geographic cohorting on patient outcomes and resident satisfaction among inpatient internal medicine teaching services within an academic hospital. Design and Intervention We conducted an interrupted time series analysis examining patient outcomes before and after the transition to geographic cohorting of our 3 inpatient teaching services within a 520-bed academic hospital in November 2017. The study observation period spanned from January 2017 to October 2018, allowing for a 2-month run-in period (November–December 2017). Participants We included patients discharged from the inpatient teaching teams during the study period. We excluded patients admitted to the ICU and observation admissions. Main Measures Primary outcome was 6-month mortality adjusted for patient age, sex, race, insurance status, and Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) analyzed using a linear mixed effects model. Secondary outcomes included hospital length of stay (LOS), 7-day and 30-day readmission rate, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores, and resident evaluations of the rotation. Key Results During the observation period, 1720 patients (mean age 64, 53% female, 56% white, 62% Medicare-insured, mean CCI 1.57) were eligible for inclusion in the final adjusted model. We did not detect a significant change in 6-month mortality, LOS, and 7-day or 30-day readmission rates. HCAHPS scores remained unchanged (77 to 80% top box, P = 0.19), while resident evaluations of the rotation significantly improved (mean overall score 3.7 to 4.0, P = 0.03). Conclusions Geographic cohorting was associated with increased resident satisfaction while achieving comparable patient outcomes to those of traditional hospital admitting models.