| September 1, 2009 |
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PARIS REGIONAL EXPANDS PROGRAM TO IMPROVE CARE TO HOSPITALIZED PATIENTS |
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Quick quiz. What’s the fastest growing medical specialty in modern medicine? Hint. It’s also the newest medical specialty.
If you said “hospital medicine” or “hospitalist,” you’re right.
The term “hospitalist” was coined in 1996, and the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) was formed the following year. A hospitalist is a physician, usually trained in internal medicine, whose sole purpose is to care for hospitalized patients. You can think of them as the inpatient equivalent of an emergency room doctor. Today, there are more than 28,000 hospitalists practicing nationwide, and SHM predicts that number will increase to 33,000 in the next couple of years. Nearly 60 percent of hospitals in the U.S. have hospitalists on staff.
Why the explosion of hospitalists in such a short period of time? Not only do hospitalists allow family doctors more time in their practice, but they are proving to have an impact on improving quality, safety and patient satisfaction and lowering cost per patient and length of stays in a hospital.
PRMC launched its hospitalist program 12 months ago with a single hospitalist. Since that time, these physicians have treated thousands of patients who are either referred to the hospital by family doctors in the community or who come to our ER and are admitted to the hospital.
The hospitalist program has proved so successful that the hospital expanded its program this week to a pool of hospitalists who will cover the hospital 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with three hospitalists on duty Monday through Friday.
“The most important benefit of a hospitalist program is improved patient care,” said Chris Dux, CEO of PRMC. “Because hospitalists are doctors who specialize in treating hospitalized patients instead of having their own office-based practices, they can respond to patient needs in minutes instead of hours. Patients benefit from having these doctors onsite 24/7 because they are able to react quickly to a patient’s changing condition.”
Hospitalists:
• Manage patients’ care through the hospital, from admission until discharge,
• Monitor patients’ progress,
• Are available to order tests and review results in real time,
• Stay in close touch with patients and their families,
• Coordinate the services of other providers involved in patient care, and;
• Communicate regularly with patients’ primary care physicians and/or other specialists.
Area family physicians are also fans of the program because it allows them to devote more time to keeping patients healthy in the office environment—with fewer delays and interruptions.
“It generally takes two hours of my day to round on patients in the hospital,” said Dr. John Cannon, family practice physician. “By allowing the hospitalist physicians to care for my patients that have been admitted to the hospital, I can see more patients each day in my office. This has allowed me to open up more appointment slots, so I can get patients who have acute problems in to see me quickly.”
It’s a blueprint that is working well in hospitals around the country—and in Paris. The number of patients under hospitalists care at PRMC has doubled in the past year.
“A well-run hospitalist program creates a win-win situation for both our patients and our physicians, said Dux. “Our patients get excellent in-hospital care, and our physicians can spend more time with patients in their office. It creates a genuine partnership between the hospital and the family physician to provide the right care at the right time.”
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Paris, Texas 75460
