I know its confusing...my title looks like a screw up...its not.
Hospitalists are doctors whose primary professional focus is hospital medicine, in other words a hospitalist is a physician whose practice emphasizes providing care for hospitalized patients. Sounds good but there is another side to the story.
Lets say you want your long-time doctor to take care of you when you are hospitalized for pneumonia at your local hospital. The hospital may not allow your doctor to care for you as they may assign a staff hospitalist to provide your care...someone you don't know and didn't select. Why are hospitals hiring hospitalists? Money, what else. By hiring hospitalists the hospital can make a profit off the labor of the hospitalist doctor. How? By paying the doctor $150,000 per year but billing $300,000 per year for the doctor's services.
I just read a report that Danvillle Regional Hospital has added four hospitalists to its staff, bringing the total number of hospitalist at that facility to seven. The report, in the Danville Register & Bee, indicated that the seven hospitalist provide about 60% of the patient care at the hospital.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
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2 comments:
The hospitals do not hire hospitalits. This is a violation of Stark law. Hospitalists are recruited to be on the medical staff just like any other physicians. The reason that hospitalists are becoming more common is that more and more internists are deciding to be either outpatient doctors or inpatient doctors. Inpatient doctors are hospitalists. This is due to a combination of factors such as life style, time on call and cost of malpractice.
When we look at nursing homes, the same is true. Hospitalists are able to manage the inpatients and are not in clinic trying to see a myriad of patients only to rush to the nursing facility after hours. Now, you have a dedicated physician.
Unfortunely, because of the higher medical/legal risk, hospitalists are being chanrged more for their malpractice insurance and taking care of those in nursing homes further increases this. I hope that they will continue to provide care for the inpatient nursing home population but I expect that the medical legal economics will force them out just as it has forced out the long time family doctors and internists.
Thanks for your comments and I do appreciate your insight.
However, I must disagree as hospitals do directly hire doctors to work as "hospitalists" and it is not a violation of Stark.
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