Another critical ingredient for a successful group, he said, is having engaged frontline hospitalists. Reviews need to be meaningful, and meetings should be held regularly with attendance essentially mandatory. Meetings, he said, might need a “tune-up,” with actual voting, written agendas, minutes taken, and group problem-solving above one-way information.
Win Whitcomb, MD, MHM, on care coordination, said the relationship with primary care physicians is crucial though difficult.
“I think we have to go out of our way to build relationships,” he said. “And we don’t have occasion to see them, so we need to figure out a way to get to know our community.”
He suggested:
- Having dedicated transcriptionists for hospitalists,
- Tracking the rate at which discharge summaries are generated within 24 hours,
- Making sure PCPs know how to reach hospitalists, and
- Scheduling events—perhaps an annual event—for meeting PCPs and skill-nursing facility healthcare professionals.
It was clear that, in a field whose dimensions seem to be changing all the time, practice management remained a top interest at HM16. Robert Clothier, RN, a practice manager for the hospitalist group at ThedaCare in Wisconsin, recently switched from managing a cardiology clinic. He said there were huge differences in hospital medicine.
“The profession is growing so fast, and really nobody knows where the end is,” he said. “I can’t even think of anything where you could say, ‘Well, no, they’ll never do that.’ It’s endless. That’s going to be hardest thing. People are going to be pulling on us, and leadership from the hospital is going to be saying, ‘You guys need to do this.’
“So how can I control what we pick, and how can I make sure that we have the resources to do it?” TH