Who are Hospitalists? What do they do? How are they helping our community?

The term "Hospitalist" was coined a mere decade ago. The term hospitalist, which refers to a physician who takes care of hospital patients in place of their own primary-care doctors, was introduced in 1996 by a New England Journal of Medicine article by Robert Wacther and Lee Goldman. In the mid-1990s, there were about 800 hospitalists nationwide. By 2005, that number had jumped to 15,000.

Hospitals of all types and sizes have hospitalist programs. Those that utilize hospitalists are more likely than their peers to be top performers. Hospitals implement hospitalist programs for a variety of reasons, from reducing the burden on primary-care physicians to improving quality and lowering costs. Beyond these benefits, you basically have people that now live in the hospital, see it as their home, and take ownership in that.

Having a hospitalist in the hospital 24/7 absolutely improves efficiency. You see a decreased length of stay for the patients. Hospitalists are able to expedite things like testing. If a test result comes back, if a doctor sees a patient at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m., if they are at the office they might not see the test result until the end of the day. The hospitalist would see it more quickly and possibly let the patient go home that day.

Besides moving things along, hospitalists spend more time around sicker people than outpatient physicians do. Since the hospitalist is there and more readily available, you are able to address emergencies that come up. Hospitalists can make an important impact on improving patient safety by helping make these measures doable and consistent. They can also help improve critical pathways (coordinated plans of care) and disease management and improve teamwork between physicians and the Hospital staff. They can help provide patient education and coordinate care with surgeons.

There may be times when patients may not understand why they are seeing a hospitalist instead of their regular doctor. Each physician in the community can decide when and if and how they use the hospitalist. The majority of physicians who can utilize the services of our hospitalists, (usually nearly all) relinquish their patient's hospital care to them. Our hospitalists are specialists in Internal Medicine (like Dr. Howard, Dr. Perkowski, Dr. Sims, and Dr. Munoz). Our hospitalists do not perform surgery, treat pediatric patients, or attend to OB/GYN patients (Women Health Services like the services Dr. Adams and Dr. Pai provide). Since the hospitalist is in the hospital it is much easier for the patient and patient's family to talk with the doctor to discuss matters of concern. If the family calls, it is much easier to talk with the hospitalist.

I am very excited about Carlsbad Medical Center's hospitalist program. It is in its infancy, only having begun last month. This program will make a profound positive impact towards improving the medical care in our community. The program has been championed by Dr. Munoz, Dr. Pearson, and Dr. Sims, and by Brad McGrath, our new CEO. Brad helped recruit our hospitalists. What is so remarkable is that everyone wins — our families and friends in southeast New Mexico who are our patients, our physicians, and our Hospital! A win-win situation such as this is rare in today's healthcare environment. As always, our vision is to exceed your expectations.

-- Published initially in "Letters to the editor," The Current-Argus Online, September 28, 2006.