Troy Ahlstrom writes…
The Society will host its annual conference, Hospital Medicine 2010, from April 8-11, 2010 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, D.C. This will be the best attended SHM event in history. Little wonder, given the rapid pace of change that hospitals and Hospitalists face as well as the uncertainties existent in our national healthcare delivery framework.
The annual conference is an event well worth your time. Our hospitalist group’s attendance last year impacted nearly every aspect of our program for the coming year. We saw seven members attend the meeting with three of them inducted as Fellows of Hospital Medicine. Certainly, I was proud of my partners for their achievements. But more importantly, we all learned about topics and techniques we’ve used frequently since the meeting last year. Some of these areas included:
- Common procedural techniques and dynamic ultrasound imaging
- Documentation, coding, and billing
- Practice evaluation and benchmarking for contract negotiations
- Provider scheduling and allocation of patients among providers
- Lectures on relevant inpatient clinical diagnostic and management dilemmas
- Updates on research impacting hospital practice
- Discussions of the politics and practicalities of current hospital practice
- Focus groups for subsections of hospital medicine such as academic practice, rural hospitalists, pediatrics, family medicine hospitalists, and many more.
As for me personally, I had opportunities to catch up with old friends, make new ones, ask experts questions about practice valuation and negotiation, attend an excellent precourse, see the sights with friends, network, and even obtain experience and information which was critical to establishing our practice’s hospital medicine fellowship which will finally get off the ground this summer!
Our hospitals, medical groups, and patient care environment change rapidly. SHM is here to equip us to manage these changes, even to mold them into opportunity for positive impact where possible. Take a look at the conference schedule and precourses. I think you’ll find there’s much here that will improve your practice. If you look closely, you’ll see much that you can’t afford to miss.
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