The report’s subsections are also critical for comparing one HMG to others, Dr. White says.
“Obviously, there is the aggregate data there to look at the average program,” he says. “But really as a hospitalist group leader, you want to know what are other programs like mine doing, and it allows you to drill down into that data.”
Survey Limitations
Any hospitalist worth their weight in scrubs knows that any medical study is only as good as its limitations. And while SoHM is a trove of valuable data information, Flores always cautions against taking data points as gospel.
“People should understand what the numbers are telling us, what goes into those numbers, and take them not with a grain of salt but take them for what they are,” she says.
For example, Flores says, look at productivity metrics per shift. Day shifts have traditionally driven that figure, and those shifts are typically busy. But night shifts have fewer patients and less productivity.
“So as more and more hospitals get 24-hour in-house coverage and have doctors working low-productivity night shifts, that [productivity] number might fall,” she says.
That sort of nuanced analysis of productivity can’t be found anywhere else, says Dr. Lovins.
These are “data that we don’t normally get from our administration,” she says, “information on things like staffing and patient loads, and how much more the director makes than the people that work for the director, and how much more nighttime people make than daytime people make. There is no other way for me to get that information, and it’s very important to make sure that our program is fair.”
Aside from fair, the data points are essential talking points as HMGs negotiate contracts and other arrangements with their administrators.
“It’s a reference point so that everybody feels like we’re using data from a national source that everyone can agree upon as fair,” says Dr. White.
In Dr. White’s case, he doesn’t have many local academic programs to benchmark against. And comparing to private, for-profit hospitals isn’t the proverbial apples-to-apples comparison. Having vetted regional and national figures for comparison is incredibly valuable, particularly since he doesn’t have to compile the data.
“If I had to go call all those group leaders and figure out what they were doing, it would be pretty exhausting,” he says.
Alternative Payment Models
Dr. Smith says that one area where the report will become even more valuable over the next few years is addressing alternative payment models (APMs). In particular, HM leaders say they’re excited about being drivers in one of the largest APMs: the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BCPI) initiative. In short, the program covers 48 defined episodes of care, including medical and surgical, that could begin three days prior to admission and stretch 30, 60, or 90 days post-discharge.
Dr. Smith thinks it’s still a bit too early to see from the report how APMs have affected compensation.
“We’re still relatively in the early days of bundled-payment models, so in that regard, the State of Hospital Medicine Report still represents very much a starting point with regard to where hospital medicine groups will find themselves as they start to encounter challenges,” he says.
Perhaps more important, Gans doesn’t expect that the maturation of APMs will result in decreased compensation for hospitalists.
“In a hospital environment where the hospital is being reimbursed a set amount for a complete hospital admission and follow-up care and potential readmissions, that is an episodic payment already,” he says. “Consequently, the incentive is there today to better manage the patient and to attain the care coordination and care management necessary for that patient to be discharged and not readmitted.”