This reader wants to go back to the “old way”:
I’m sorry, but when I chose my primary care doctor that is who I want on my team looking out for me, not someone I don’t know. As the hospitalists will be talking to the surgeon, my primary care doctor should be involved in my care. When they give the medications, maybe your primary care doctor would have done it in a different way. When someone is sick in a hospital, first of all, they do not want to deal with a doctor they don’t know. That’s why you pick one that you like.
Related posts:
- Hospitalists assimilate inpatient medicine, is resistance futile?
- Are hospitalists doing their job too well?
- Most hospitalists are good, but some, like these ones, aren’t
- Should hospitalists or intensivists manage ICU patients?
- My take: Incentives, hospitalists, probabilities
- Should hospitalists control hospital beds?
- Are relationships being lost in medicine, and are hospitalists partly responsible?
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{ 3 comments }
Just remember who the hospitalist works for and how their performance is evaluated. The hospital has always wanted to get the patient out quicker and keep things less expensive while there. The fee for service primary doc with no financial ties to the hosptial was the patient’s buffer against the system. The hospital could bring only minimal pressure on the primary doc to rush things or cheapen things. The hospitalist’s interest (financially) however is identically aligned with the hospital, being an employee. Their salary, job security, and performance bonus are all dictated by their results favorable to the hospital’s bottom line.
Is anyone aware of any evidence that Hospitalists improve care for patients. I havn’t been able to find any; one would think if such were available then hospitalists would be happy to trumpet such.
Most hospitalists are not employed by the hospital and their billing is separate.
The worst case scenario for the patient and the hospital is hospitalists or ED docs (or pick a practice) that work for a corporate entity (or any 3rd party)in a remote location that is aligned with their own shareholders interests, not the hospital’s or the patient’s.
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