Industry News  News, insight, trends and more from the hospitalist and inpatient practice industry	News & Events> Industry News Press Releases In the News Events
4/10 "Attention to Detail" The Hospitalist Scrupulous documentation can help HM minimize Medicare audits. 10/22/09 "Physicians Have Doubled Their Online Time Since 2004," Healthcare IT News Nine in 10 U.S. physicians surveyed now agree that the Internet is essential to their practice. Seventy-five percent now go online daily for work. 8/31/09 "Accountable Care Organizations: A New Idea for Managing Medicare," American Medical News The goal of ACOs is to encourage physicians and hospitals to integrate care by holding them jointly responsible for Medicare quality and costs. 8/14/09 "Surge in Hospital Employment of Physicians Means Greater Compliance Risk" AIS Health Business Daily A revolution in health care relationships is underway, with a big upswing in hospital employment of physicians, and compliance considerations are at the heart of it. 7/7/09 "Most Wired Hospitals" Healthcare IT News  The Most Wired Survey and Benchmarking study, conducted annually by Hospitals and Health Networks, has named the "100 Most Wired Hospitals and Health Systems" for 2009. 5/15/09 Sold Out SHM Kicks Off 2009 Meeting The Society of Hospital Medicine 2009 Annual Meeting kicked off  in Chicago. The SHM meeting this year broke record numbers of registrants to the annual seminar—about 2,250 attendees—a landmark event in the hospital medicine specialty. 5/11/09 Modern Healthcare's The 50 Most Powerful Physician Executives in Healthcare Modern Healthcare features this year's winners. 1/26/09 Health Info Technology Saves Lives, Costs: Study Hospitals in Texas that used computers to keep track of patient records and manage care had lower rates of deaths, complications and costs, U.S. researchers said on Monday, offering a strong argument for hospitals to go "paperless." 1/21/09 ICD-10 Deadline Moved Up, Holding Off Costs for Two Years In a decision that brought relief to healthcare managers nationwide, HHS has moved the deadline for moving all coding to ICD-10 CM up to October 1, 2013 from a prior deadline of October 1, 2011. 1/09/09 Study Finds Over Half of US Hospitals Utilize Hospitalists Data from the 2007 survey of 4,897 community hospitals conducted by the American Hospital Association (AHA) indicates over half of US hospitals have hospital medicine programs, and that there were over 23,000 hospitalists in the US. 12/18/08 Hospitalists as Bed Control Officers? Yes, at least at Johns Hopkins Bayview. Doctors there reported their experience recently in the Annals of Internal Medicine. ER wait times were shortened and everyone seemed happy. 11/10/08 Medical Director Receives Award Dr. Rob Felber, Ingenious Med user, was recently named the TeamHealth Regional Hospital Medical Director of the Year. 11/10/08 What it's Like to be a Pediatric Hospitalist Prior to about 10 years ago, when a child became ill enough to require hospital admission, their pediatrician would place them in a hospital and then manage their inpatient care accordingly 11/08/08 Hospitalists: A New Way to Heal In the past, physicians scrambled between the office and the hospital. While some still practice that way, medical centers are seeking doctors trained in internal or family medicine to serve as hospitalists. 11/07/08 ORYX Performance Measures Asking what is important in QI and what your hospitalist group should focus on is a tricky question. The more you get involved in the politics of a healthcare organization, the more you realize that everyone in the hospital has their own ideas about what's most important in QI. 11/03/08 Interviewing to Find Attitudes As the practice runs day to day and year to year, there are certain things you want to characterize the organization.They can include any number of attributes: teamwork, a pleasant atmosphere, diligence, attention to details, dependability, or even caring.And these attributes are important because they set the tone for the practice in its daily operation. 11/01/08 Hospitalists as Rolling Stones Survey data show that more than 26% of hospitalists plan to change jobs in the next two years 11/01/08 The 1st Hospitalist Mini-College and our Annual Hospital Medicine CME Course Rolling out a new “product” in a nasty economy is usually a formula for disaster. But last week we held the first-ever “Hospitalist Mini-College,” and it was an rousing success. 10/30/08 The Hospital Credit Crisis: Danger and Opportunity for Hospitalists If you need a little rousting from that warm blanket of security you feel walking down the hospital hallways, then take a look at some recent headlines. On October 15, 2008 The New York Times ran a story titled “Disappearing Credit Forces Hospitals to Delay Improvements.” 10/29/08 Increasing Demands for Internists As most readers know, we are increasing the number of US medical students.  This increase receives funding from student tuitions and sometimes state funds.  However, we do not currently have a planned increase in residency slots.  Unless we increase residency slots, we will produce no more trained physicians, we will only decrease the percentage of IMGs. 10/28/08 Handoffs or Fumbles: Transferring Care Amongst Physicians Primary care physicians hand their patients off to ED docs, who in turn hand them off to hospitalists or specialists, who in turn (eventually) hand them back to their out patient physician. Additionally, there are hospitalist to ... 10/20/08 Trouble Ahead for Credit-Dependent Hospitalist Practices The world economy and US credit markets have clearly entered into a period of serious disruption. You may be asking yourself a series of questions: “How does this affect hospital medicine? More importantly, what are the implications for my hospital, my practice group, my career?”  10/20/08 Hospitalist Program Gives Office-Based Physicians More Time for Appointments "A hospitalist takes care of only those patients who are in the hospital," said Dr. Bobby Maynard, hospitalist program director for the Great Falls Clinic. That allows office-based physicians to spend more time in their office taking care of patients. 10/18/08 Hospitalist Group Program Makes Patient Safety Top Priority Every week day at 10:30 a.m. health care professionals hold a meeting to discuss the status of every patient on the fifth floor of Holston Valley Regional Medical Center. 10/15/08 "Just the Facts in Hospital Medicine" Book Released Cogent Healthcare is pleased to recognize Shaun Frost, M.D., Regional Medical Director, for his contribution to a recently published textbook targeting the practicing hospitalist, entitled Just the Facts in Hospital Medicine. 10/14/08 Restructuring to Improve Recruitment A hospital in a small Midwestern community had one hospitalist on staff and was contracting with a hospitalist group who supplied a number of hospitalists when the solo physician was not on duty. 10/14/08 URMC Pediatric Hospitalist Wins AAP Research Award Karen Wilson, M.D. M.P.H., received a research award today at the American Academy of Pediatrics’ annual meeting in Boston for her study that determines the average length of stay for respiratory illnesses, the most common reason for pediatric hospitalization. 10/05/08 Hospitalists Help Alleviate New Diversion Policies A hospitalist program that started at Southcoast Hospitals in the last year also helps patients be treated and discharged in a timely manner... 10/04/08 Hospitalists and Case Management Program Help Chronically Ill Patients The goal is to have better outcomes and reduced hospital readmissions. Although funded by the foundation, the Community Case Management Program reports through the Hospitalist Service program, because so many of its referrals come from those providers. 9/25/08 Hospitalists: A Growing Trend Getting medical care in a hospital can be a tough process, from finding someone who knows your history to scheduling a check-up with the right people. Now, a trend that started on the west coast is making its way to the Ozarks and could make the process a whole lot easier. 9/01/08 Winter Hospital Hospitalists Improves Baby Delivery Program The OB Hospitalist Group provides hospital-based doctors who treat women in the labor and delivery unit. These obstetricians are available for pregnant patients who don't have private doctors designated to deliver their babies or for patients who arrive with pregnancy-related emergencies. 9/01/08 PrimeDoc Hospitalist Group Expands into Specialty Hospital Care PrimeDoc Management Services, Inc., a physician owned company that specializes in the establishment, staffing, and management of turnkey hospitalist programs across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, has expanded its services into specialty hospital care with the launch of a hospitalist practice at Landmark Hospital of Athens. 8/31/08 179 Minutes of Care That would never happen without a hospitalist on board. 8/29/08 National Quality Forum Endorses National Consensus Standards for Health Information Technology To improve quality and efficiency and reduce errors and unnecessary treatments across the healthcare system, the National Quality Forum (NQF) has endorsed nine new national voluntary consensus standards for health information technology (HIT) in the areas of electronic prescribing, electronic health record (EHR) interoperability, care management, quality registries, and the medical home. 8/29/08 Norwalk Hospitalists Provide Exceptional Pediatric Care Norwalk Hospital has a pediatric hospitalist program that offers doctors who follow a patient from admission right through discharge. The hospitalists are on staff at the hospital around the clock and coordinate with patients’ private practice pediatricians as needed, according to Vicki Smetak, M.D., director of the Pediatric Hospital Program at Norwalk Hospital. Dr. Smetak was chosen for this position because of her experience in pediatric critical care... 8/28/08 Editorial: Health IT symphony orchestra Health information exchanges should take a cue from symphony orchestras. 8/22/08 An Update on the Rural Hospitalist Conundrum A while ago I wrote about the ending of my hospitalist program and my options to join another group. Here's a brief recap of the choices, and a discussion of the factors influencing my decision... 8/21/08 Hospitalist Maternity Program to Allow for More Care While many obstetricians divide their time between office and hospital, the Regency Medical Center (the women's division of Winter Haven Hospital) has introduced an Obstetrics & Gynecology (OB/GYN) hospitalist program, a service that allows hospital-based doctors to focus on providing care to patients in the labor and delivery unit. 8/15/08 How And When Errors In Inpatient Medication Reconciliation Occur The Joint Commission made inpatient medication reconciliation a National Patient Safety Goal in 2005, focusing nationwide attention on the issue of errors in inpatient medication records as they move in and out of the hospital. According to a new study from researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Massachusetts General Hospital, inpatients experience an average of nearly one and a half potentially harmful errors in their medication record during a hospital stay. 8/08 Should You Be Comanaging Patients? A veteran hospitalist takes the heretical position that not all comanagement is good During a provocative talk on comanagement given at the Society of Hospital Medicine annual meeting earlier this year, hospitalists were asked to raise their hands if they were currently managing such patients. While some hands remained in the air for all three examples, presenter Eric Siegal, MD, pointed out that all of these patients are relatively young and have a “low burden” of medical comorbidity. As a result, he questioned whether comanagement would really be of any value.  8/08 Pearls of Hospital Medicine Wisdom for New Hospitalist Recruits Each Summer, I welcome the new hospitalists, usually fresh out of residency, to my program. I treat them to an orientation where I share my accumulated pearls of hospital medicine wisdom. Because sports is a constant metaphor in my life, I like to think of it as the pep talk coaches give just before the beginning of the season. Here is a condensed version: 8/08 Are Hospitalist Leaders Born or Bred? This eternal question of nature versus nurture applies to hospitalists just as well as it does to any group of medical providers.