Hospitalists “Seeing Wisely”: A High Value Proposition

>
By  |  December 4, 2014 | 

I remember being a third year medical student and reading Bob Wachter’s piece in the New England Journal of Medicine that made the term “hospitalist” mainstream. I was intrigued. I matched at the University of Chicago, which was one of the few programs in the country at the time that had a hospitalist program. 

When I rotated on the academic hospitalist service as an intern, I distinctly remember being taught about the possibility of influenza in a febrile older diabetic patient who had been started on broad-spectrum intravenous antibiotics. I immediately ran to fetch a viral swab and sent it to the lab. Bingo…Later that afternoon, the patient had been diagnosed with influenza A. What’s even more exciting is that we could stop the broad-spectrum intravenous antibiotics, which were both unnecessary and potentially harmful. Moreover, I could remove the “culture if spikes” recommendation on his sign-out, since the daily cultures were likely contributing to his anemia. Lastly, I was able to plan to discharge the patient after getting hydration overnight and he was able to eat his breakfast in the morning.

I did not know it at the time, but it is fitting that one of my first exposures to high value care was from a hospitalist. Fast forward 15 years, and we are now in the midst of a “revolution” as Daniel Wolfson (shameless plug to follow him on Twitter) from the ABIM Foundation, the organization that convened the landmark Choosing Wisely campaign, says. While Choosing Wisely is targeted at guiding practicing clinicians on how to promote high value care through highlighting what not to do, there is still a substantive question on the table – how do we train the next generation of physicians-in-training to deliver high value care? The answer has to be more than just ‘training’ about healthcare costs. As Neel Shah, the founder and Executive Director of Costs of Care says, “No one goes to medical school to treat the G.D.P.” Obviously, we all went to medical school to treat patients. And as quotable Dr. Osler has stated, “The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.”

Hospitalists, by definition, must “see wisely.” They are not only at the frontlines of clinical care, they also are charged with working with hospital leaders to face the fiscal realities of healthcare today. As firsthand witnesses to the waste in our healthcare system, hospitalists see useless workups of incidentalomas gone awry or unnecessary procedures that result in unintended consequences for the patients. Furthermore, as academic hospitalist Chris Moriates has eloquently stated, we have an obligation to our patients who are suffering from the high price tag of healthcare in the United States to also “do no financial harm.” 

So whether you have completed an innovation in your hospital or just have a bright idea you’re itching to execute, you are ready to submit 500 words by January 15th to the 2nd annual Teaching Value Choosing Wisely Challenge. After all, it’s time for us to take charge and show everyone how a career in hospital medicine is a ‘high value’ one.

 

Dr. Arora is Director of Educational Initiatives at Costs of Care, and is one of the co-chairs of the Teaching Value Choosing Wisely Challenge, which is funded by the ABIM Foundation.

Share This Post

Leave A Comment

For security, use of Google's reCAPTCHA service is required which is subject to the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

About the Author: Vineet Arora

Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP, MHM is Associate Chief Medical Officer, Clinical Learning Environment at University of Chicago Medicine and Assistant Dean for Scholarship and Discovery at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. Dr. Arora’s scholarly work has focused on resident duty hours, patient handoffs, sleep, and quality and safety of hospital care. She is the recipient of the SHM Excellence in Hospital Medicine Research Award in 2007. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including JAMA and the Annals of Internal Medicine, and has received coverage from the New York Times, CNN, and US News & World Report. She was selected as ACP Hospitalist Magazine’s Top Hospitalist in 2009 and by HealthLeaders Magazine as one of 20 who make healthcare better in 2011. She has testified to the Institute of Medicine on resident duty hours and to Congress about increasing medical student debt and the primary care crisis. As an academic hospitalist, she supervises medical residents and students caring for hospitalized patients. Dr. Arora is an avid social media user, and serves as Deputy Social Media Editor to the Journal of Hospital Medicine, helping to maintain its Twitter feed and Facebook presence. She blogs about her experiences at http://www.FutureDocsblog.com and actively tweets at @futuredocs.

Categories

Related Posts

By Suchita Shah Sata, MD, SFHM
September 30, 2022 |  0
If you were designing the perfect hospitalist job description, what would be the optimal workload to achieve high productivity? This was the crux of the discussion during September’s JHMChat. The conversation featured Drs. Marisha Burden, Moksha Patel, Mark Kissler, and Elizabeth Harry as well as researcher Angela Keniston, coauthors of “Measuring and driving hospitalist value: […]
By Lanna Felde, MD
November 22, 2021 |  2
Last week’s #JHMChat saw an all-star guest lineup including Drs. Adam Rodman, Zahir Kanjee, Laura McNamara, and Shane Warnock of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center debating the value of the routine daily physical exam – is it worthwhile or a waste of time? This question was recently debated in our Point: Counterpoint series and got […]
December 11, 2020 |  0
I’ve been thinking a lot about endurance recently. For the third time, COVID-19 is surging in the U.S., and this time, it’s not localized to New York or the Sun Belt – it’s everywhere. Healthcare workers exhausted from the first and second waves – and those in smaller Midwestern communities who are just now experiencing […]
Go to Top