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• The Hospitalist as Bed Czar: Indispensability, But At What Cost?

  In last week’s Annals of Internal Medicine, Eric Howell and colleagues describe an innovative experiment in which the hospitalists at Johns Hopkins Bayview became the institution’s bed czars. It worked.So should my program and yours take this one on?Hopkins Read More... Posted Fri, Dec 12 2008 4:17 AM by Bob Wachter | 6 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Efficiency, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine

• Are Hospitalists Recession-Proof?

  Hospitals aren’t the first businesses hurt when the economy sours, but they get hurt nonetheless, as an article in last week’s NY Times points out. But hospitalists have never lived through a massive downturn. What happens to them when the economy tanks?Let’s Read More... Posted Fri, Nov 14 2008 8:13 AM by Bob Wachter | 4 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Transparency and Reporting, Efficiency, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Health Policy

• Notes from the Society of Hospital Medicine's Annual Meeting

  A few random observations from the Society of Hospital Medicine’s annual meeting in San Diego: There are about 1600 people here, most of whom I don’t know. How did this happen? People still seem pretty jazzed about their jobs and lives. The meeting has Read More... Posted Sat, Apr 05 2008 7:39 AM by Bob Wachter | 0 Comments Filed under: Quality Improvement, Hospital Care, Efficiency, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Patient Safety/Medical Errors, Health Policy

• Average Time of Discharge: Why a Hospital is Not a Hilton

  Do you get as annoyed as I do about being pressured on your “Time of Discharge?” I just received my monthly report, and we’re in The Doghouse again: our average TOD – 3:28 pm – is hours after “check-out time.” But when did we turn into the Holiday Inn? Read More... Posted Wed, Mar 26 2008 7:05 AM by Bob Wachter | 14 Comments Filed under: Quality Improvement, Hospital Care, Transparency and Reporting, Quality Measurement, Efficiency, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine

• Today’s New England Journal Hospitalist Study

  Today my pals Peter Lindenauer and Andy Auerbach (and colleagues) published the largest hospitalist outcomes study to date, in the New England Journal of Medicine. It is a rigorous, important piece of work. Let me try to add a bit of context. First, the Read More... Posted Thu, Dec 20 2007 9:05 AM by Bob Wachter | 2 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Quality Measurement, Efficiency, Medical Education/Academia, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Ambulatory/Primary Care, Health Policy

• The Surgical Hospitalist

  In an article in this month’s Journal of the American College of Surgeons (with a companion cover piece in the ACS’s Bulletin), four of my surgical colleagues – and this internist, perhaps to add a “cognitive” spin – describe UCSF’s “surgical hospitalist” Read More... Posted Sun, Nov 18 2007 6:04 PM by Bob Wachter | 2 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Efficiency, Medical Education/Academia, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine, Health Policy

• Another Hospitalist Efficiency Study – Any News?

  Last week, another study was published (this one in the Archives of Internal Medicine) documenting a hospitalist efficiency advantage. Coming on the heels of more than 20 studies with similar results (see, for example, this and this), one might ask how Read More... Posted Wed, Oct 03 2007 10:22 PM by Bob Wachter | 0 Comments Filed under: Hospital Care, Efficiency, Medical Education/Academia, Hospitalists/Hospital Medicine