The Happy Hospitalist thinks so, and I partially agree, as the physician payment system encourages specialization and the fractionation of patient care:
We are here ONLY as a financial necessity out of a payment system gone mad. As much as I rile on the MNB, I am forced to admit that my position as a hospitalist would be nonexistent if not for the incompetent clowns making policy decisions based on lobster dinners with lawyer lobbyists.
Dr. RW feels that if Medicare continues its current policy course of bundling payments, hospitalists’ futures will be secure and their salaries will continue to rise:
If the Medicare clowns implement the latest idea they’ve been tinkering with, the bundling of doctors’ rounding fees into hospital DRG payments, it will be the final finishing blow for traditional hospital care. The hospitalist model will be secure once and for all. Debates about our value will become moot. The demand for hospitalists will accelerate over the next decade and the future of inflating hospitalist salaries will be secure.
topics: medicare, hospitalists
Related posts:
- Should hospitalists control hospital beds?
- Why do we have hospitalists anyway?
- Are relationships being lost in medicine, and are hospitalists partly responsible?
- Hospitalists assimilate inpatient medicine, is resistance futile?
- Most hospitalists are good, but some, like these ones, aren’t
- Hospitalists are here to stay, or look how ER physicians are thriving
- Can this be the year Medicare changes its payment formula?
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{ 3 comments }
Clowns or no, this ship has sailed – about half of hospitals nationwide employ hospitalists and they have effectively reduced ALOS and inpt costs significantly. No turning back the clock.
The last piece of the feedback loop would be redirecting some of that savings to PCPs.
do we know they have effectively reduced alos? i guess it depends on how you define effectively? ditto for significant inpatient costs?
from my perspective, the data for those claims is underwhelming.
that is not to say the hospitalists do not provide a very valuable service–i certainly believe they do. respectfully, i’m just not sure about the claims made by above poster.
I know that my hospitalist group blows away the numbers which were reported last year. And taken as fact. It’s not even close. In fact, it’s an embarrasment to to be on the losing side of the equation. When you have a well run hospitalist group, you get excellent quality, decreased costs both real and intangible with no drop off in quality delivered.
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