For the ambitious hospitalist, 2010 will be an eventful year. The next 12 months will be filled with new and exciting opportunities to establish credentials in the specialty and to find venues for continuing education.
But the time to start is now.
The new Recognition of Focused Practice (RFP) in Hospital Medicine application process begins this month and, if last year is any indicator, SHM’s annual conference in April will sell out well in advance.
Begin the RFP Application Process
Don’t wait for HM10 to begin applying for the RFP in HM designation. American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM)-certified diplomates don’t have to wait for their maintenance of certification (MOC) to expire in order to apply. Instead, typical hospitalists can begin the process if they:
- Have completed training in internal medicine;
- Are certified in internal medicine; and
- Have engaged for at least three years in a practice that focuses primarily on HM.
Award-winning HOSPITAL CEO is Featured SPEAKER at HM10
For Paul Levy, addressing hospitalists as a featured presenter at HM10 in Washington, D.C., makes perfect sense. As president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, he sees firsthand the value hospitalists bring to patients and the 621-bed academic hospital.
“We place a heavy emphasis on eliminating harm, and hospitalists are key in that effort,” Levy says. “They have constant contact with the systems and patients on the floor, and they’re people we count on to come up with solutions.”
Though the conference is months away, Levy already knows the general focus of his presentation: eliminating preventable harm. He plans to talk about the medical center’s progress in reducing preventable harm, ideas for the future, the role of transparency, and different approaches to process improvement.
Given that Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center was one of three AHA-McKesson Quest for Quality Prize honorees in 2009, he will be speaking from a position of authority. “It’s really nice to be recognized for what we’re doing, but we’re only taking baby steps in elimination of harm and process improvement,” he says. “We take those awards as encouragement to do even better.”
For 2010, Levy predicts an increased role for hospitalists in new programs at Beth Israel Deaconess. In particular, Project GRACE, a “geriatric bundle” of care for elderly patients that pairs the medical center’s gerontologists with hospitalists, was in pilot stage in 2009 and will be rolled out in full this year.
Paul Levy’s blog, Running a Hospital, is available at http://runningahospital.blogspot.com.
Hospitalists who satisfy those requirements can begin the process this month by developing and submitting attestations that demonstrate their focus on HM and their commitment to the specialty. The certification process requires that the hospitalist and a senior executive at his or her hospital each submit an attestation.
Once the attestations are submitted and accepted, ABIM will provide more information on the exam, which is scheduled for October. Registration for the exam will begin in May. Detailed information about the application process will be presented at the ABIM pre-course at HM10. For more information, visit www.abim.org.
Register for HM10
With an agenda packed with networking events, eight pre-courses and more than 90 educational sessions, Hospital Medicine 2010 in Washington, D.C., promises to be the event for hospitalists of all stripes. The conference begins with pre-courses on Thursday, April 8, and runs through Sunday, April 11.
This year’s pre-courses will cover a range of topics, from critical care to practice management and quality improvement (QI). New hospitalists can receive an introduction to the specialty at “Early Career Hospitalist: Skills for Success,” while physicians certified by ABIM can participate in the interactive MOC learning sessions. The ABIM session will include information about the inaugural MOC through the RFP in HM.