As the need for outpatient physicians to be more productive in the office steadily increases and the time allotted to seeing individual patients shrinks accordingly, answering numerous phone calls from hospital personnel can be disruptive. Moreover, managing a patient s deteriorating condition over the phone may well be a challenge better met by a physician who can be present at the patient s bedside. When primary care physicians must go to the hospital on an emergent basis, the time they consume in seeing the patient and traveling to and from the hospital causes major disruptions in their office schedule. This could compromise the care given to patients in the office, reduce the physician s ability to see acutely ill patients who do not have a scheduled office appointment, and result in unnecessary emergency department visits and hospitalizations. Clearly, these problems can be averted by reliance on hospitalists.
Patient satisfaction stands to be improved by the hospitalist movement.
A complaint frequently reported on patient satisfaction surveys is a primary care physician s failure to be on time for scheduled office visits, a situation that most often results from the physician s need to take care of hospitalized patients. This complaint has become increasingly consequential to physicians, since some healthcare organizations use patient satisfaction data in determining physician compensation. Turning over inpatient care to hospitalists grants patients and outpatient physicians alike the opportunity to obtain an additional opinion on how best to manage the condition at hand. Often, a fresh look can aid in establishing the proper diagnosis and treatment and setting up appropriate consultations as needed. In addition, reliance on hospital-based generalists improves coordination of care, avoids excess consultation and fragmentation that can result when multiple providers are involved in a patient s care, and reinforces communication with the patient s family and primary care physician.