What a year it has been in the world of hospital medicine with all the changes, challenges, and uncertainties surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. Some hospitalist programs were hit hard early on with an early surge, when little was known about COVID-19, and other programs have had more time to plan and adapt to later surges.
Dr. Bryan Huang
As many readers of The Hospitalist know, the Society of Hospital Medicine publishes a biennial State of Hospital Medicine (SoHM) Report – last published in September 2020 using data from 2019. The SoHM Report contains a wealth of information that many groups find useful in evaluating their programs, with topics ranging from compensation to staffing to scheduling. As some prior months’ Survey Insights columns have alluded to, with the rapid pace of change in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Society of Hospital Medicine made the decision to publish an addendum highlighting the myriad of adjustments and adaptations that have occurred in such a short period of time. The COVID-19 Addendum is available to all purchasers of the SoHM Report and contains data from survey responses submitted in September 2020.
Let’s take a look at what transpired in 2020, starting with staffing – no doubt a challenge for many groups. During some periods of time, patient volumes may have fallen below historical averages with stay-at-home orders, canceled procedures, and a reluctance by patients to seek medical care. In contrast, for many groups, other parts of the year were all-hands-on-deck scenarios to care for extraordinary surges in patient volume. To compound this, many hospitalist groups had physicians and staff facing quarantine or isolation requirements because of exposures or contracting COVID-19, and locums positions may have been difficult to fill because of travel restrictions and extreme demand.
What operational changes were made in response to these staffing challenges? Perhaps one notable finding from the COVID-19 Addendum was the need for contingency planning and backup systems. From the 2020 SoHM, prior to the pandemic, 47.4% of adult hospital medicine groups had backup systems in place. In our recently published addendum, we found that 61.9% of groups instituted a backup system where none previously existed. In addition, 54.2% of groups modified their existing backup system. Some 39.6% of hospital medicine groups also utilized clinicians from other service lines to help cover service needs.
Aside from staffing, hospitals faced unprecedented financial challenges, and these effects rippled through to hospitalists. Our addendum found that 42.0% of hospitalist groups faced reductions in salary or bonuses, and 35.5% of hospital medicine groups reduced provider compensation by a reduction of work hours or shifts. I’ve personally been struck by these findings – that many hospitalists at the front-lines of COVID-19 received salary reductions, albeit temporary for many groups, during one of the most challenging years of their professional careers. Our addendum, interestingly, also found that a smaller 10.7% of groups instituted hazard pay for clinicians caring for COVID-19 patients.
So, are the changes and challenges your group faced similar to what was experienced by other hospital medicine programs? These findings and many more interesting and useful pieces of data are available in the full COVID-19 Addendum. Perhaps my biggest takeaway is that hospitalists have been perhaps the most uniquely positioned specialty to tackle the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have always been a dynamic, changing field, ready to lead and tackle change – and while change may have happened more quickly and in ways that were unforeseen just a year ago, hospitalists have undoubtedly demonstrated their strengths as leaders ready to adapt and rise to the occasion.
I am optimistic that, as we move beyond the pandemic in the coming months and years, the value that hospitalists have proven yet again will yield long-term recognition and benefits to our programs and our specialty.
Dr. Huang is a physician adviser and clinical professor of medicine in the division of hospital medicine at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of SHM’s Practice Analysis Committee.
