By Rohit Uppal, MD, MBA, Chief Clinical Officer, Hospitalist Services
The Society of Hospital Medicine recently announced that the first Thursday in March will be dedicated to the fastest growing specialty in modern healthcare–Hospital Medicine!
This day of recognition for our hospitalist clinicians is a well-deserved celebration of the enormous value they bring to their hospitals and communities.
I want to take this opportunity to say THANK YOU to every TeamHealth Hospitalist!
Thank you for your leadership in championing change and continuous improvement in our hospitals. Thank you for the excellent care you provide. Thank you for keeping our patients safe. Thank you for the sometimes challenging, yet impactful, conversations you have with patients and loved-ones each day. The work you do is incredibly meaningful to our patients and to TeamHealth! Please join me in celebrating the first Annual National Hospitalist Day on March 7, 2019!
The term “hospitalist” was first coined over 20 years ago by Robert Wachter and Lee Goldman in a New England Journal of Medicine article. Since then, the size and scope of hospital medicine has grown beyond clinical care to include teaching, research, quality improvement and executive leadership. Every day our TeamHealth Hospitalist teams use their experience and expertise to enhance the quality, safety and efficiency of patient care in our hospitals. In a very short time, hospitalists have become an integral and essential part of every well-run hospital.
As part of TeamHealth’s dedication to hospital medicine, a new team, Hospitalist Services Performance Improvement (HSPI), has been created to support our commitment to hospitalists. The goal of the HSPI team is to support our hospitalists in achieving best-in-class performance and bring additional “boots on the ground” bench strength to our continuous improvement efforts.
How can the Hospitalist Services Performance Improvement Team help?
- Physician & Nursing Leadership Coaching: Whether it is providing leadership education to a clinician new to a leadership role or supporting the development of a leader in an existing role, HSPI can provide targeted tools and resources to help.
- Program/Start-up Assessments: For new and existing hospital medicine programs, we know that there are key principles and characteristics that are essential for program success. HSPI can provide you comprehensive program assessments and develop action plans.
- Triad Operational Support & Team Effectiveness: The leadership triad is an essential layer of support that has significant impact on our hospital medicine programs. We have tools and programs to support their operational work as well as tools to measure and improve teamwork within the hospitalist team.
- Rapid Process Improvement Workshop (RPIW): Trying to improve a specific metric? Need help with a workflow or process flow issue? Does it involve multiple teams and departments? We can help!
- Patient Experience: Patient experience is a fundamental component of high quality care. With our advanced program of training and shadowing, we can help!
- Post-Acute Performance Networks (PN): Enhancing transitions from hospital to post-acute facility leads to improved patient outcomes, patient satisfaction and reduced readmission rates. Building robust, performance-driven post-acute networks is a win-win for both hospitals and patients. We have resources and tools to help!
- Staffing Analysis: Having appropriate staffing levels to manage the day-to-day workload can help prevent stress and burnout. We can help analyze workload and staffing.
If you have questions for the HSPI Team or would like more information about the services they can provide, please email HSPI@teamhealth.com.
Again, thank you for the meaningful work you do every day. Thanks to your dedication, we have created better and safer systems of care and made a significant, positive difference in the way healthcare is delivered in our hospitals.
Happy National Hospitalist Day! Share your #HowWeHospitalist story!
To celebrate #NationalHospitalistDay submit your story in the Society of Hospital Medicine’s #HowWeHospitalist social media contest! Learn more about how to submit your story and win prizes here.