Third, hospitalists provide value by helping to improve physician practices, including primary care physicians, surgeons, emergency physicians and specialists.
Today, most hospitals use traditional physician on-call systems to provide overnight coverage. A fourth value added by hospitalists relates to the extraordinary coverage (24/7) provided by many hospital medicine programs.
The dominant challenge facing American hospitals relates to financial pressures. Published research studies have consistently documented that hospital medicine programs generate resource utilization savings.
Improved throughput management is a sixth value added by hospitalists. Many hospitals are operating at or close to capacity, creating a crisis of bed availability. Hospitalists are uniquely qualified to address these patient flow issues.
A seventh dimension of the value provided by hospitalists relates to the formal and informal education they provide. In a formal capacity, hospitalists are teachers of clinical and non-clinical inpatient skills to medical students, residents, and fellows. In an informal role, hospitalists impart knowledge to other physicians, healthcare professionals, patients, families, and hospital administrators.
Hospitalists make major contributions to the healthcare quality and patient safety, the eighth aspect of value added by this new specialty. Hospitalists can reduce medical errors, improve the process of care, and achieve better patient outcomes.
Conclusion
Hospital medicine has developed as a specialty with unique characteristics and expertise. Hospilalists have specialized skills, knowledge, and relationships that contribute value to hospitals, physicians, patients, and health plans. These benefits include and go significantly beyond the delivery of quality patient care to hospital inpatients. The hospital medicine specialty continues to grow at a significant rate because of the broad-based positive impact made by hospitalists.
Joseph A. Miller, Editor
Mr. Miller can be contacted at [email protected]