![]() Edwards, “I’ve done this for four years straight. “This was the perfect choice for me,” says Dr. Danhof nor Edwards is nuts they are extremely happy with the work they’re doing. Of course, the rest of my group thought I was nuts.” I decided I really liked the hospital and wanted to go back to do work there. “So, we got rid of our hospital work, and that was great for everyone in the group except me. Edwards, referring to his internist practice. “Ninety-five percent of our call on weekends and at night had to do with hospital work, but it was only 5% of our income,” explains Dr. Today he is the chief medical officer for PrimeDoc, a 100% physician-owned and managed private-practice hospitalist company. And as a primary care physician, I was not challenged.”Ĭhris Edwards, MD, was a partner in an Orlando-based internal medicine practice for 14 years before becoming a hospitalist. Plus, from a personal standpoint, one of the reasons I went into internal medicine was I really enjoyed the diagnostic challenges. “There was significant frustration in trying to get reimbursed and the constant hassles of dealing with insurance companies. “The overhead was a killer,” explains Dr. ![]() Worth, Texas, but in her former life, was a sole practitioner for four years. Martha Danhof, MD, is an IPC Hospitalist at Baylor All Saints Medical Center in Ft. But not every hospitalist is fresh out of residency. The Society of Medicine survey notes that the average age for a hospitalist is 37, with an average of 3.7 years of experience and nearly two out of three are men. ![]() “I think it has been a huge contribution to the growth of hospital medicine.” “For people who have families, or for people who have a lot of personal interest in other areas, definitely allow for that balance between professional and personal life,” explains Dr. Hospitalists also work more defined shifts, so when their shift is over, their time is truly their own. According to the Society of Hospital Medicine’s 2007-2008 Bi-Annual Survey, the average hospitalist today receives a total annual compensation of $193,000-a step up from what most primary care practitioners earn-and an increase of almost 13% over the last two years. We actually like to see systems change, so we tend to do a lot of committee work and become involved with cost containment endeavors that the hospital may have.”īut there are lifestyle attractions as well, including work schedule and financial compensation. And most hospitalists tend to have a global view of healthcare. “There’s definitely immediate results as opposed to watching someone over several months, adjusting medication on an outpatient basis. “Most like to do clinical work we like taking care of patients who are sick and in the hospital,” Dr. But by his second year, Shah-like many other hospitalists-had found his calling. He admits that he was not certain where he wanted to focus his education when he started his residency. Monal Shah, MD, is a hospitalist at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. This specialty of hospitalist medicine is really the next logical step.” A professionally and financially rewarding step. “You didn’t have critical care doctors, and you didn’t have emergency room doctors. “If you go back 30 years, everyone did their own intensive care medicine,” explains Steve Frankel, MD, who has spearheaded the effort by the National Jewish Medical and Research Center to operate and staff the hospitalist program at Rose Medical Center in Denver over the past two years. Today there are more than 20,000-and that number is expected to surpass 30,000 over the next two years. According to the Society of Hospital Medicine, there were 2,000 practicing hospitalists in 1998. The hospitalist movement has grown exponentially over the last decade. Wachter, generally considered the academic leader of the hospitalist movement, might have done well to copyright the term, because today it’s practically a household word. The term “hospitalist” was first used by Robert Wachter, MD, of the University of California, San Francisco, in a 1996 article written for the New England Journal of Medicine. “The future has a way of arriving unannounced.” -George Will
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