“Hospitalists” Are an Increasing Specialty in California Health Care
According to a recent study by the California HealthCare Foundation, there has been a signficant shift since the mid-1990s toward “hospitalists” rather than “primary care-directed hospital care.” A hospitalist is a primary care physician whose primary focus is hospital care for inpatients. After the inpatient is discharged, the hospitalist returns the responsibility for care for the patient to the patient’s primary care physician.
The report notes that “the hospitalist field has become the fastest growing specialty in the history of American medicine, skyrocketing from a few hundred physicians in the mid 1990s to more than 20,000 today.” At least 59% of California hospitals have hospitalists on their staffs. The conclusion of the report is that the rise of hospitalists could have a significant impact on the provision of health care in the state, with the potential of higher turnover and burnout rates among personnel who are spread too thin and issues around the current internal medicine training that is given to residents, which does not currently place enough emphasis on peri-operative and critical care, among other things.