What is home for HTFMs?
Where are HTFMs most likely to find their professional home? “That’s hard to answer,” said Patricia Seymour, MD, FHM, FAAFP, an academic hospitalist at the University of Massachusetts-Worcester. “In the last 4-5 years, SHM has worked very hard to create a space for HTFMs. AAFP has a hospital medicine track at their annual meeting, and that’s a good thing. But they also need to protect family physicians’ right to practice in any setting they choose. For those pursuing hospital medicine, there’s a different career trajectory, different CME needs, and different recertification needs.”
Dr. Patricia Seymour
Dr. Seymour is the executive cochair of SHM’s family medicine SIG and serves as interim chief of a family medicine hospitalist group that provides inpatient training for a family practice residency, where up to a third of the 12 residents each year go on to pursue hospital medicine as a career. “We have the second-oldest family medicine–specific hospitalist group in the country, so our residency training has an emphasis on hospital medicine,” she explained.
“Because I’m a practicing hospitalist, the residents come to me seeking advice. I appreciate the training I received as a family physician in communication science, palliative care, geriatrics, family systems theory, and public health. I wouldn’t have done it any other way, and that’s how I counsel our students and residents,” she said. Others suggest that the generalist training and diverse experiences of family medicine can be a gift for a doctor who later chooses hospital medicine.
AAFP is a large umbrella organization and the majority of its members practice primary care, Dr. Heim said. “I don’t know the percentage of HTFMs who are members of AAFP. Some no doubt belong to both AAFP and SHM.” Even though both groups have recognized this important subset of their members who chose the field of hospital medicine and its status as a career track, it can be a stretch for family medicine to embrace hospitalists.
“It inherently goes against our training, which is to work in outpatient, inpatient, obstetric, pediatric, and adult settings,” Dr. Heim said. “It’s difficult to reconcile giving up a big part of what defined your training – that range of settings. I remember feeling like I should apologize to other family medicine doctors for choosing this path.”
Credentialing opportunities and barriers
For the diverse group of practicing HTFMs, credentialing and scope of practice represent their biggest current issues. A designation of Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine (FPHM) has been offered jointly since 2010 by the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) and the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), although their specific requirements vary.
Eligible hospitalist candidates for the focused practice exam must have an unrestricted medical license, maintenance of current primary certification, and verification of three years of unsupervised hospital medicine practice experience. ABIM views FPHM not as a subspecialty, but as a variation of internal medicine certification, identifying diplomates who are board-certified in internal medicine with a hospital medicine specialization. They do not have to take the general internal medicine recertification exam if they qualify for FPHM.
ABFM-certified family physicians who work primarily in a hospital setting can take the same test for FPHM, with the same eligibility requirements. But ABFM does not consider focused practice a subspecialty, or the Certificate of Added Qualifications in Family Medicine as sufficient for board certification. That means family physicians also need to take its general board exam in order to maintain their ABFM board certification.
ABFM’s decision not to accept the focused practice designation as sufficient for boarding was disappointing to a lot of hospitalists, said Laura “Nell” Hodo, MD, FAAFP, chair of AAFP’s hospital medicine MIG, and a pediatric academic hospitalist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. “Many family physicians practice hospital medicine exclusively and would prefer to take one boarding exam instead of two, and not have to do CME and board review in areas where we don’t practice anymore,” Dr. Hodo said, adding that she hopes that this decision could be revisited in the future.
A number of 1-year hospital medicine fellowships across the country provide additional training opportunities for both family practice and internal medicine residency graduates. These fellowships do not offer board certification or designated specialty credentialing for hospitalists and are not recognized by the American College of Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), which sets standards for residency and fellowship training. “But they reflect a need and an interest in optimizing the knowledge of hospital medicine and developing the specific skills needed to practice it well,” Dr. Geyer noted.
She directs a program for one to three fellows per year out of the Central Maine Family Medicine Residency program and Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, and is now recruiting her tenth class. At least 13 other hospital medicine fellowships, out of about 40 nationwide, are family medicine based. “We rely heavily on the Core Competencies in Hospital Medicine developed by SHM, which emphasize clinical conditions, medical procedures, and health care systems. Gaining fluency in the latter is really what makes hospital medicine unique,” Dr. Geyer said.
Often residency graduates seeking work in hospital medicine are insufficiently prepared for hospital billing and coding, enacting safe transitions of care, providing palliative care, and understanding how to impact their health care systems for quality improvement, patient safety and the like, she added.
Dr. Geyer said her fellowship does not mean just being a poorly paid hospitalist for a year. “The fellows are clearly trainees, getting the full benefit of our supervision and supplemental training focused on enhanced clinical and procedural exposure, but also on academics, quality improvement, leadership, and efficiency,” she said. “All of our fellows join SHM, go to the Annual Conference, propose case studies, do longitudinal quality or safety projects, and learn the other aspects of hospital medicine not well-taught in residency. We train them to be highly functional hospitalists right out of the gate.”
Until recently, another barrier for HTFMs was their ability to be on the faculty of internal medicine residency programs. Previous language from ACGME indicated that family medicine-trained physicians could not serve as faculty for these programs, Dr. Goldstein said. SHM has lobbied ACGME to change that rule, which could enable family medicine hospitalists who had achieved FPHM designation to be attendings and to teach internal medicine residents.
