Hospitalists: Leading the Way to More Effective, Higher Quality Health Care

Hospital inpatients are sicker today than they were in past decades and treatment regimens are more technologically complex than ever before. These realities, combined with pressures on hospitals to control costs, increase efficiency, improve patient outcomes and reduce medical errors are changing the nature of inpatient care.

One strategy that is increasingly being used to adapt to these changes is the establishment of hospital medicine programs, which feature physicians who are called “hospitalists.”1,2  Hospitalists are distinct from other physicians in that they do not have an office-based practice but instead practice full-time within an institutional setting. In 2004, nearly 13,000 practicing hospitalists served as the attending physicians for about 5.4 million hospitalized patients in the United States. 3

The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) has prepared this paper to introduce policymakers to hospitalists and their role in the U.S. health care system.4 The paper is intended to help policymakers adopt policies and implement programs that recognize the value that hospitalists bring to the delivery of healthcare.
 

Learn about the Hospital Medicine movement and gain a better understanding of the value proposition that Hospitalists bring to the health care system in this policy paper produced by the Socitey of Hospital Medicine called :"Hospitalists: Leading the Way to More Effective, Higher Quality Health Care".