Hospital Medicine

In barely more than a decade, hospital medicine has gone from a nearly unknown specialty to one of today's hottest new fields. Hospitalists are physicians who provide exclusively in-patient care. Hospitals, managed care companies and sometimes group practices employ them.

The Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) and the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) have partnered to bring you the latest news, information, resources, continuing education opportunities and more on this growing specialty. SHM is the largest organization in the nation representing hospitalists and the practice of hospital medicine. MGMA is the premier membership association for professional administrators and leaders of medical group practices.

Quote of Note
From the "Hospitalist Leader"

“Just as you would not hire someone [whom] you do not think will fit the job even if there is an urgent need to fill that spot, urgency should not define how we respond to the financial crisis and the call to healthcare reform. We should not blindly accept that readmission reduction is reasonable, despite high political pressure to support it. I’m all for advocating for patient safety and improving the process by which a patient gets home. I’m against accountability without the clear means of accomplishing the task at hand.” – Robert Chang

SHM's directory of hospitalist-related blogs

Inside Hospital Medicine

Hospitalists can improve patient compliance after hospital discharge, reduce hospitalization stays and promote better use of health plan drug formularies. However, hospitalist services face many challenges.

One medical group's experience developing an internal medicine hospitalist program

How do you combine hospitalist medicine with academic practice?

Learn how to recruit and retain physicians for your hospitalist program

The four pillars of career satisfaction and recommendations that hospitalist employers can use to improve the work environment

How to measure hospitalist performance with metrics, reports and dashboards

Education

SHM courses and continuing education opportunities:

Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program
SHM's Annual Meeting Precourse – April 8, 2010
Improve the management and operation of an existing or new hospital medicine program.
Fundamentals of Inpatient Coding and Documentation: Getting Paid What You Deserve
SHM's Annual Meeting Pecourse – April 8, 2010
Help your hospitalist physicians develop medical decision-making and documentation habits that support the optimal CPT code for the services rendered.
Hospital Medicine 2010
April 8-11, Washington, D.C.
The premier educational event for health care professionals who specialize in hospital medicine, SHM's annual meeting provides participants with tools to:

Improve clinical skills
Address management issues with possible solution
Lead change and innovation in their organizations

March 18-19, seminar:Mastering Your EHRImplementation. Take a hard look at emerging models and technologies that work in other industries expert Frank Cohen, MPA and Six Sigma Black Belt, who will introduce you to process-improvement models based on Lean and Six Sigma.
March 18-19, seminar: Mastering Your EHR Implementation. Building and sustaining a high-performing cohesive work environment while maintaining constructive employee work relationships can be a significant ongoing challenge. This seminar focuses on developing a manager’s ability to build one-on one work relationships with employees, develop team-building efforts, and manage employee performance.
March 20-21, seminar: AchievingEfficient Practice Operations. Learn how to improve and differentiate your practice with operational changes that exceed the expectations of your patients, physicians and staff members.
May 5-6, seminar: Mastering Your EHR Implementation. If you are planning to implement an electronic health record (EHR) in your practice but don’t know how to get started, this seminar is for you.
May 7-8, seminar: MGMA2010 Financial Management and Payer Contracting Conference. This seminar will set the stage for your practice so you can participate in and profit from emerging reimbursement strategies.
May 16-18: MGMA 2010 Financial Management and Payer Contracting Conference. Get answers to answers for all of your financial management, revenue cycle and contracting dilemmas.
Oct. 24-27, MGMA2010 Annual Conference . Reflect. Retool. Rebuild in the Big Easy.

Hospitalist Resources
SHM and MGMA launched the first annual joint Hospital Medicine Survey as part of MGMA’s Physician Compensation and Production Survey on Jan. 18. The Jan. 27 instructional Webinar is designed for hospital medicine group physician leaders and practice administrators who will be responsible for responding to the MGMA-SHM survey.

From SHM:

Improve the performance of your hospital medicine group with Hospitalists: A Guide to Building & Sustaining a Successful Program. It aims to describe and characterize best practices and successful models within the fast-growing hospitalist movement

Operate your hospital medicine group more effectively with the help of SHM’s new Practice Management site.

From MGMA:

Operating Policies & Procedures Manual for Medical Practices, 3rd edition. Natural disasters, declining reimbursement and more diverse patient populations have made the need for specialized medical practice policies and processes even greater.

HR Policies & Procedures Manual for Medical Practices, 4th edition. Human resource issues in the medical practice setting have a reputation for being more complex than the mainstream; thus, the need for specialized information has never been greater.

Electronic Health Records: Transforming Your Medical Practice, 2nd edition. While some electronic health record (EHR) implementations proceed on schedule with the team’s full participation and – seemingly – little effort, others flounder, stall, or struggle, experiencing only limited success or, in extreme cases, no success at all. What accounts for the difference?

Medical Fees in the US: 2010 Edition. This book includes everything you need to review your fees, set fees for new services, challenge low payments from third party payers and evaluate managed care contracts.

Data Sanity: A Quantum Leap to Unprecedented Results. Far too much emphasis has been placed on “tools, tools and more tools” (especially statistical techniques), resulting in rampant waste caused by poor everyday organizational use of data. This book offers a new way of thinking via a common organizational language based in process and understanding variation to motivate more productive daily conversations for everyone.

Integrated Delivery Systems: Ensuring Successful Physician-Hospital Partnerships. As medical groups, hospitals, and health systems position themselves for the new marketplace, they must be proactive in establishing new relationships and affiliations. Because the outcomes of health system integration vary widely, this book will help steer organizations toward a common purpose – in a way that is meaningful to providers, administrators, and health care leaders, and most of all, to patients.

See additional group practice management resources.

Advocacy

The new ICD-10 and HIPAA transaction standards

SHM's advocacy efforts

Hospital Medicine

In barely more than a decade, hospital medicine has gone from a nearly unknown specialty to one of today's hottest new fields. Hospitalists are physicians who provide exclusively in-patient care. Hospitals, managed care companies and sometimes group practices employ them.

From SHM:

From MGMA: