Colburn & Associates Ltd -- Hospitalists

Hospitalists

Hospital medicine is one of the fastest growing medical specialties is a field that barely existed a decade ago. Variously called hospitalists or inpatient physicians, doctors who practice hospital medicine, most are trained in general internal medicine, usually work solely within hospitals, caring for patients from the time they are admitted to the time they’re discharged. Unlike most other specialties, hospital medicine is organized around the site of care, not a particular organ or disease.

Hospitalists work in many areas of the hospital, from the ICU and CCU to the ER and medical-surgical units. Their primary role is the direct management of inpatients, and in many cases, inpatient physicians now perform most of the tasks once handled by patients’ primary care physicians. As the field has evolved, a growing number of hospitalists have begun assuming a care-coordinator’s role. In some hospitals, inpatient physicians oversee many aspects of a patient’s hospital care: process management, communications among other physicians involved in the patient’s care, discharge planning, and patient/family communications, among others.

The ranks and importance of hospitalists have increased exponentially in recent years. Numbering less than 1,000 five years ago, today an estimated 7,000 U.S. physicians have chosen to devote their practice to hospital medicine. Hospitalists now practice at most of the country’s leading institutions — from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Today, about half of all U.S. hospitals directly employ or use hospitalists in some capacity — often working through formally organized hospitalist groups. In addition, about half of all managed care organizations now operate hospitalist programs on either a voluntary or required basis.

Colburn & Associates identifies and matches board-certified Hospitalists to meet your specific criteria. We provide quick turnaround for your business questions