In hospital medicine, what a hospitalist doesn’t do can be just as important as what he or she does do.
That’s why SHM and hospitalist experts from across the country collaborated with the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation on its groundbreaking Choosing Wisely campaign to publish 10 procedures that hospitalists should think twice about before conducting. Together, with more than a dozen medical specialties, SHM will announce the list of procedures in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 21.
Of the medical specialties contributing lists to Choosing Wisely, SHM is unique in that it will publish two lists (each with five recommendations): one for adult HM and another for pediatric HM.
Once the recommendations have been made public, hospitalists will have multiple ways of learning about them. SHM will publish the recommendations online, via email, and in The Hospitalist. Details about the unique process of developing the Choosing Wisely lists—and the impact they will have on everyday hospitalist practice—will be published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
Others in healthcare, including patients and family members, will have a chance to learn about Choosing Wisely through a partnership with Consumer Reports and the public dialogue that the campaign hopes to generate.
SHM President Shaun Frost, MD, SFHM, has been unequivocal in his support for the campaign and has urged all hospitalists to support it as well. “Attention to care affordability and experience are essential to reforming our broken healthcare system, so let’s lead the charge in these areas and help others who are doing the same,” Dr. Frost wrote in the November 2012 issue of The Hospitalist.
To get more involved with this industry-changing campaign, visit www.choosingwisely.org and check out the upcoming Choosing Wisely pre-course at SHM’s annual meeting at www.hospitalmedicine2013.org.