SHM is also front and center regarding transitions of care, and has been charged with developing transition quality measures for consideration in reporting initiatives.
As for future initiatives, Dr. Holman told attendees about SHM’s plan for a Hospital Care Collaborative. The society will partner with national organizations in allied health, including the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses and the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. All will work together on common policies and implementation strategies.
The society also will provide more resources for hospitalist leaders. “SHM wants to be positioned to support leadership training,” Dr. Holman noted. “We have a multiyear plan” that includes creating core competencies for hospital medicine leadership, a possible leadership certification, a mentoring program, and leadership coaching.
SHM CEO Larry Wellikson, MD, summed up the tremendous growth of hospital medicine: “We’re large and in charge, and we’re only going to get bigger.” He elaborated on progress made on SHM initiatives that will enhance this growth, including:
- Continued monitoring of the first official certification for hospital medicine, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM)-approved Focused Recognition for Hospital Medicine;
- Creation of the first designation of commitment to the practice of hospital medicine: the SHM Fellowship in Hospital Medicine (FHM) credential. A Senior Fellowship in Hospital Medicine and a Master in Hospital Medicine will also be available. Information and applications will be available this fall, and all SHM members can apply;
- Continued use of new media to educate and inform members; and
- One- or two-day regional educational forums across the U.S.
Dr. Cawley, chief medical officer of Medical University of South Carolina Medical Center in Charleston, closed the President’s Lunch by echoing the speakers’ message for hospitalists. “Change is in the air,” he asserted, recalling the last time healthcare was poised for big change, when President Clinton was prepared to overhaul the system in 1993. “The difference between 1993 and 2008 is you—it’s hospitalists,” Dr. Cawley urged. “You are the guiding team” for change.
Also during Saturday’s luncheon, outgoing SHM board members Bill Atchley, MD, and Mary Jo Gorman, MD, were honored for their six years of service.
Focus on the Future
Hospital Medicine 2008 was firmly focused on the future: the future of American healthcare, the future of hospital medicine, and what hospitalists will and should do to further their specialty. These themes surfaced again and again in the plenaries, in breakout sessions, and in casual hallway conversations.
Drs. Berwick and Morrison stirred up attendees with their morning addresses and had them debating the state of healthcare. Dr. Wachter, professor and associate chairman, department of medicine, and chief of the medical service, University of California, San Francisco, offered his unique perspective by taking Drs. Berwick and Morrison’s 35,000-foot-view and bringing it down to the day-to-day work of hospitalists. The creator of the popular healthcare blog “Wachter’s World” (www.wachtersworld. org) suggested “megatrends” hospitalists might expect to see, including:
- The growth of local pay-for-performance (bonuses based on performance) and state reporting systems, and a shift toward outcome measurement as opposed to process measures;
- The power of public reporting, driven by the “simple embarrassment of highlighting underperformers”;
- Zero tolerance for “disruptive” physicians;
- Ever-increasing hospitalist-surgical comanagement; and
- IT-induced “dislocation” of medicine as computerization decreases the need for physical presence, as well as the emergence of IT haves and have-nots.
Jane Jerrard, a Chicago-based medical journalist, writes the “Public Policy” and “Career Development” departments for The Hospitalist and has covered the SHM Annual Meeting the past three years.