Understanding the Hospitalist Model of Care

The hospitalist model of inpatient care has become widespread across hospitals and health systems in the United States. Hospitalists are physicians who specialize in providing comprehensive medical care solely to hospitalized patients. 

What Are Hospitalists?

Hospitalists are doctors who dedicate their clinical practice to taking care of patients admitted to the hospital. They do not see outpatients in an office setting. Their responsibilities include:

  • Managing and coordinating all aspects of an inpatient’s care.
  • Performing patient rounds, procedures, and consultations.
  • Ordering tests, treatments, and medications.
  • Overseeing transitions like admissions, transfers, and discharges.
  • Collaborating with nurses, specialists, and the patient’s regular doctors.

Most hospitalists are internists, family medicine physicians, or pediatricians. They provide general inpatient medical services and can manage a wide variety of conditions and acuity levels.

The Hospitalist Care Model

Under the hospitalist model of care delivery, a hospitalized patient’s treatment gets transferred from their regular primary care physician to an on-site hospitalist. The hospitalist then leads the inpatient care team overseeing all services during the hospital stay.

This approach differs from the traditional model, where a patient’s personal doctor would have to make routine hospital visits and rounding. With hospitalists always present in the facility, they can consistently monitor patients, respond quicker to any changes, and make real-time care decisions.

Upon discharge, the patient’s care refers back to their regular physician for follow-up outpatient treatment as needed. Clear communication and documentation ensure a seamless care transition.

Advantages of Hospitalists

The hospitalist model emerged to help improve hospital efficiency, care coordination, and patient outcomes. Some of the key advantages hospitalists provide include:

Enhanced Patient Safety and Quality

Having physicians exclusively dedicated to inpatient, hospital-based care allows more frequent monitoring and rapidly responding to patient needs around the clock. Hospitalists intimately understand hospital processes, systems, and best practices for inpatient safety protocols.

Improved Care Transitions

Hospitalists ensure all pre-admission testing, procedures and information gets communicated properly upon admission. They also coordinate seamless discharges back to a patient’s primary physicians or next care setting when leaving the hospital.

Higher Physician Productivity/Efficiency

Hospitalists do not have to go between an office and hospital setting, enabling them to focus solely on treating inpatients. This results in higher productivity, faster order processing, and discharges compared to traditional rounding models.

Cost Savings

The efficiency of dedicated hospitalist physicians allows reducing lengths of stay and preventing duplicate tests/procedures. This generates cost savings for hospitals and patients despite compensating for around-the-clock coverage.

Satisfied Outpatient Doctors

For primary care physicians, transferring inpatient responsibilities to hospitalists eliminates hospital rounding duties that disrupt clinic time. Many prefer this model focusing solely on their outpatient practice.

Staffing Hospitalists

To provide 24/7 inpatient coverage, most hospitals use teams of multiple hospitalist physicians, nurse practitioners and staff. Smaller community hospitals may employ a core group of hospitalists directly.

Larger health systems often leverage hospitalist staffing companies like SouthlandMD or physician management services firms. These companies recruit, hire, and deploy contingents of supplemental hospitalist physicians and teams scaling to meet fluctuating hospital demands nationwide.

Conclusion

The hospitalist model has emerged as a best practice for inpatient care delivery and hospital medicine. As healthcare continues emphasizing care coordination and quality metrics, the role of dedicated hospitalists is likely to keep expanding. Their focused inpatient expertise benefits patients, physicians, and hospitals alike.

Looking ahead, the hospitalist field may also evolve to include even more specialized roles and responsibilities. As hospitals seek to provide higher-value care, maximizing the capabilities of their hospitalist teams will remain a strategic priority. The hospitalist model allows aligning physician resources more efficiently with the needs of acutely ill inpatients.