The new trend in Hospitalists

There is a growing trend for Hospitalists. These are physicians who only take care of hospitalized patients. They have no outpatient practice and they provide no follow-up care.

Recent statistics show there are now about 20,000 hospitalists. This is four times as many as there were in 2002 and nearly half of all US hospitals have them.

If there weren’t a shortage of qualified individuals, these programs would be even more prevalent but the demand is well ahead of the supply.

Most hospitalists work in physician owned groups and others are actual employees of the hospital or teaching institution.

A few HMO’s actually employ their own hospitalists and they demand that patients who are members be cared for by the hospitalists even if their primary care physician has hospital privileges.

This, in my opinion, will not last long as patients typically want their own physicians. But as with all HMO’s, you get what you pay for.

Certainly hospitalists offer some advantages, but data on whether they actually save money is questionable and highly debatable.

The original thought was that if a physician is in the hospital all day, he can follow up on exams more expeditiously and discharge patients sooner ultimately saving money.

But the problem arises because every patient is a new patient to the hospitalist and minor problems that a primary care physician may know and have worked up previously is usually investigated much more aggressively adding to cost and length of stays.

It is not uncommon for a hospitalist to consult multiple other specialists in caring for patients again adding to the overall cost of healthcare.

This part of the equation is partly a defensive strategy fearing medical-legal problems for missing even a minor problem and not officially addressing it.

However you feel about hospitalists, they're not likely to go away.