AAFP President-elect Bruce Bagley, M.D., chaired the 1998 Task Force on Hospitalists. N.Y. He said about 20 percent of AAFP members use hospitalists, about 55 percent are neutral on the hospitalist concept and about 25 percent believe going to the hospital is part of being a complete family physician. I don't know why, all of a sudden, it needs a label. Even though the percentage of family physicians with hospital admitting privileges sank from 91.1 percent in 1988 to 85.8 percent in 1998, only about 4 percent of physicians throughout those 11 years felt their privileges were unduly restricted.
People are afraid of involuntary exclusion from the hospital.
We all should be concerned about that. The decision of who should care for a family physician's hospitalized patients should be made by the patient and the family physician. Many physicians who talked with task force members stressed the importance of communication between the hospitalist and the primary care physician. AAFP commissions are continuing to monitor the hospitalist trend. FP Report is published by the AAFP News Department .