Media Monitoring Report: January 9 – January 21, 2016
The latest edition of SHM Media Highlights features the continuing evolution and growth of hospital medicine during its twentieth anniversary, performance measurement, SHM member successes, Journal of Hospital Medicine patient safety research and studies on how physicians choose their personal end-of-life care plans.
In general hospital medicine news, The Advisory Board reviewed the growth of hospital medicine and current opportunities and challenges moving into 2016, while Modern Healthcare announced the increased hospitalist hiring rate in the Bon Secours Health System. Bon Secours is now home to 837 hospitalists and advanced practice clinicians.
Prominent SHM members appeared in mainstream news outlets often over the last two weeks. They include Dr. Bob Wachter and his op-ed on performance measurement in The New York Times, Dr. Mark Williams and his appointment to the Editorial Advisory Board of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety and the team of Drs. David Meltzer and Vineet Arora in Forbes for their work at The University of Chicago Medicine to improve care for more vulnerable elderly patients.
Rounding out the list, ABC News reviewed the results of two studies surrounding how doctors often choose less aggressive end-of-life care plans compared to their patients, and Becker’s cited Journal of Hospital Medicine patient safety research in two recent articles.
Media Highlights: January 9 – January 21, 2016
Twenty years in, the hospitalist landscape is shifting – and prompting new debates
The drive for efficiency in health care has led to a boom in hospitalists—and growing pains for the profession as hospitals seek to increase efficiency and demonstrate high quality outcomes, Noam Scheiber reports for the New York Times. Hospital medicine emerged two decades ago as a managed care-driven innovation: rather than losing office time to rounds, internists could stay at their offices while hospitalists took over in-hospital care.
January 12, 2016
The Advisory Board Daily Briefing
Bon Secours hires hospitalists as first-quarter surplus grows
Bon Secours Health System used strong investment income in the first quarter of its fiscal 2016 to mitigate lower operating income and eke out a higher net gain than the prior-year period. The Catholic-sponsored system posted a net surplus of $18.7 million on revenue of $782.1 million for the quarter ended Nov. 30 compared with a net surplus of $18 million in the prior year’s quarter on revenue of $756.2 million, according to the system’s unaudited first-quarter financial statements released Friday.
January 15, 2016
Modern Healthcare
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160115/NEWS/160119900
How Measurement Fails Doctors and Teachers
Two of our most vital industries, health care and education, have become increasingly subjected to metrics and measurements. Of course, we need to hold professionals accountable. But the focus on numbers has gone too far. We’re hitting the targets, but missing the point. Through the 20th century, we adopted a hands-off approach, assuming that the pros knew best. Most experts believed that the ideal “products” — healthy patients and well-educated kids — were too strongly influenced by uncontrollable variables (the sickness of the patient, the intellectual capacity of the student) and were too complex to be judged by the measures we use for other industries.
January 16, 2016
The New York Times
Williams Named to Editorial Advisory Board of Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
Dr. Mark V. Williams, professor and vice chair in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Kentucky, has been named to the advisory board of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. A past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) and the founding editor of the Journal of Hospital Medicine, he actively promotes the role of hospitalists as leaders in delivery of health care to hospitalized patients.
January 14, 2016
UKNow (University of Kentucky News)
Back to the Future? Redesigning Health Care to Meet the Needs of Our Sickest Patients
Despite best intentions—and best practices and clinicians —information is sometimes lost in translation as patients cycle through various sites of care. We need to find ways to improve the care for most vulnerable patients—and we look to the past, where continuity was a hallmark of medical care, for inspiration. We focus on programs where the same physician sees patients across different sites of care.
January 20, 2016
Forbes
Many Doctors Choose End-of-Life Care Differently Than the General Population, Two Studies Show
The way many doctors face end-of-life care differs from the approach of the general public, according to two new studies published today that suggest doctors are actually less inclined to seek heroic medical care in those circumstances.
January 20, 2016
ABC News
Patient safety may be jeopardized by overburdening attending physicians
A recent study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine used objective workload and safety measures to support the previously unsupported notion that attending physicians with a high workload are typically linked with reduced effectiveness and poor patient outcomes. The researchers conducted their study of more than 69,000 teaching evaluation items submitted by 543 internal medicine residents for 107 attending physicians. The evaluations covered supervised inpatient teaching services from July 2, 2005, to July 1, 2011.
January 12, 2016
Becker’s Hospital Review
3 quality, patient safety indicators for treating staph infections
Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia is associated with significant morbidity and mortality in hospitalized adults, but there are existing processes of care that can improve clinical outcomes, according to a study published the Journal of Hospital Medicine. The study was conducted at a 1,558-bed tertiary care teaching hospital and included adult patients hospitalized between Jan. 1, 2012, through April 30, 2013, with at least one positive blood culture with S. aureus.
January 11, 2016
Becker’s Hospital Review
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