HM14 offers something for every hospitalist, from procedures training to special interest forums to practice management pearls. The four-day annual meeting, coming up March 24-27 at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, caters to young, old, and every doctor in between.
So how will you get the most value out of the conference?
“The highest-yield content is going to depend on what your background is and how to spend that time in a way that augments your knowledge, your perspective, or your exposure to like-minded colleagues in a very individual way,” says HM14 course director Daniel Brotman, MD, FACP, SFHM, director of the hospitalist program at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. “One of the things that’s so cool about hospital medicine is its diversity.”
But don’t take Dr. Brotman’s well-educated word for it. Here’s a list of recommendations from Team Hospitalist, the only reader-involvement group of its kind in HM, on events they would not miss this year.
Team Hospitalist contributors: Danielle Scheurer, MD, MSCR, SFHM, hospitalist, chief quality officer, Medical University of South Carolina; Edward Ma, MD, hospitalist, Coatesville (Pa.) VA Medical Center; Nick Fitterman, MD, FACP, SFHM, vice chair of hospital medicine, Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine, Manhasset, N.Y.; James O’Callaghan, MD, FHM, clinical assistant professor of pediatrics, Seattle Children’s Hospital, University of Washington, and EvergreenHealth, Kirkland, Wash.; Klaus Suehler, MD, FHM, Mercy Hospital, Allina Health, Minneapolis, Minn.
1 “When Time is Brain (or Cord): Neurological Emergencies for the Hospitalist”
Tuesday, March 25
10:35-11:15 am
Dr. Suehler: As hospitalists, we often are the first ones to see patients with such neurological emergencies, and it is crucial to know when to get the neurologist or neurosurgeon involved. These are opportunities with a brief window of time to save or restore a patient’s neurological function.
2 “The ACA at 4: Impact on Costs, Quality, Lifestyle, and Payment”
Tuesday, March 25
10:35-11:50 am
Dr. Scheurer: This will be a packed session and will discuss all angles of the Affordable Care Act: how it will play out in hospitals around the country and, particularly, what it will mean to hospitalists. The complexity of the ACA is dizzying, so it will be time well spent to hear from several leaders in the field on how the major components of the ACA can and will impact us.
Dr. Ma: The ACA is nearly four years old, so I’m looking forward to a review on what precisely has been accomplished in medicine thus far and what can we anticipate down the road. The lawyers bantered about the constitutionality of the policy for the first two years. Politicians have been ranting about death panels, repeals, and amendments [for] the past four years. The public endured the latter part of 2013 reading about (or experiencing firsthand) the disastrous rollout of the healthcare.gov website. I want a clearer idea, beyond the fear and loathing, beyond the inane rhetoric, of the real impact that ACA has had and will have on the two most important components of healthcare: physicians and patients.
3 “Rate, Rhythm, Rivaroxaban, Ablation: Update in Atrial Fibrillation”
Tuesday, March 25
11:20 am-Noon
Dr. Suehler: This is a standard situation for hospitalists. We often admit patients with atrial fibrillation or get consulted when patients who are hospitalized for other reasons develop atrial fibrillation. It is very important for hospitalists to provide optimal care and counseling to patients with this arrhythmia, whether or not cardiologists get involved down the road.