Leaders: Proceduralists Offer Value to Hospital, Challenge for Docs

Dr. Rosen: I believe that hospitalists are going to become more and more involved in assisting with safe transitions of care from the acute side to subacute to home. I think we will need to broaden our traditional role of just taking care of hospitalized patients in order to adopt a more patient-centric, longitudinal view of their care. One of the Achilles heels of hospital medicine has always been multiple hand-offs. Every time you hand off, there is a voltage drop of information and this works to the detriment of the patient. Whether it has to do with robust medicine reconciliation, arranging follow-up appointments, doing home visits, providing skilled nursing care, or simply making sure that the patient or family members have someone to call in case of questions, hospitalists will more and more be seen as the team who can, and must, solve these problems. As health care reform, accountable care organizations, and changes in reimbursement work their way through the system, we are going to be held more accountable for quality and outcomes, rather than just RVUs [relative value units]. Hospitalist programs of the future will play an instrumental role in helping patients transition more seamlessly across what has traditionally been inefficient systems involving multiple, fragmented silos of care.