DO - Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine

For nearly 10 years, Robin Thomas, D.O. (‘91), was in private practice
in internal medicine. Now, she works 24-hour shifts caring for hospitalized
patients–sometimes as many as 20 to 25 a day–at Blanchard Valley
Regional Health Center in Findlay, Ohio. She misses the close
relationships with her private-practice patients, but for her, she’s found
a niche in this new role.
“I always liked the hospital so much more than the office, so it was a
good fit,” she says.
Thomas is among a growing number of physicians who have become
inpatient care providers in recent years. Hospitalists, as these medical
providers often are called, oversee acute care for hospitalized patients,
a role that previously had been the province of the primary care
physician or specialists. “Hospitalists provide a service to...doctors
who often are too busy with their practices to come to the hospital
regularly,” says Jose Torres, D.O. (‘98), who works as a hospitalist at
Grandview Hospital/Kettering Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio.
“Without hospitalists, rounds could go on forever.”
The number of physicians
who oversee acute care in
hospitals is growing.
by Linda C. Knopp
A Movement Takes Root
Having physicians on staff to manage inpatient care isn’t a new
phenomenon, but it is creating a growing field of medicine. In a 1996
New England Journal of Medicine article, authors Robert Wachter, M.D.,
and Lee Goldman, M.D., first coined the term “hospitalist” to describe
a physician who spends a significant amount of work time in hospitals.
Today, the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), a Philadelphia-based
membership organization for inpatient care providers, defines hospitalists
as “physicians whose primary professional focus is the general medical
care of hospitalized patients. Their activities include patient care, teaching,
research and leadership related to hospital medicine.”
SHM estimates that there are approximately 15,000 practicing
hospitalists in the United States today–up from just a few hundred in
the late 1990s and no more than a handful in the early ’70s. Even when
Thomas completed her internal medicine residency at Akron City
Hospital in 1995, most primary care physicians didn’t consider inpatient
care a career choice. “At that time, there weren’t many hospitalists,” she
says. “Everyone had private practices and did inpatient work. The only
physicians with hospital practices were critical care, ER and anesthesia.”
Thanks, in part, to increased demands on the time of physicians with
office practices, increased pressure from society to provide cost-effective
and quality care to hospital inpatients, and limits on the number of
hours medical residents could work, the field of hospital medicine had
taken off by 2005 when Eric Schumacher, D.O. (’00), completed his
residency in internal medicine and pediatrics at Wright State University
in Dayton. Because the work schedule and job duties appealed to him,
Schumacher accepted a position as a hospitalist at Ohio State
University Medical Center in Columbus, where he cares for patients
through the hospital’s general inpatient service, its James Cancer
hospitalist service and its Ross Heart hospitalist service. He also cares
for hospitalized pediatric patients at Children’s Hospital and serves as
an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Ohio State.
Jose Torres, D.O. (‘98), is among a growing contingent of physicians who
opt for a hospital-based career.
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