It’s that time again – here’s the brochure and course information for the Management of the Hospitalized Patient (MHP) conference, October 14-16 at the Fairmont Hotel in beautiful, fog-free (at least in October) San Francisco. This will be our 14th annual hospital medicine conference; the first, attended by about 100 hardy hospitalist pioneers ...

You probably saw yesterday’s hospitalist piece in the New York Times, arguably the best lay article on the movement to date. It hit all the right notes, and did so with uncommon grace and fairness. The piece, written by the Times’ Jane Gross, profiled Dr. Subha Airan-Javia, a young hospitalist at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. ...

A quick note to let you know about my 13th annual Hospital Medicine CME course, September 24-26 at the Fairmont Hotel in SF. The big news this year is the keynote speaker: Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River. Many folks have asked me how I managed to line up Captain Sully for the ...

The Institute of Medicine just released its long-awaited report on trainee duty hours. It is well researched and balanced, and its recommendations appropriately reflect what we know vs. what we believe. Now the fun begins. Let’s start with a little background, some of it drawn from my book Understanding Patient Safety: Let’s be honest. ...

Modern Physician just named Adam Singer, the founder of IPC-The Hospitalist Company, its first annual Physician Entrepreneur of the Year. Adam and I don’t always see eye to eye, but I want to congratulate him and highlight some of his contributions. When the hospitalist field launched in the mid-1990s, Adam was there – I recall seeing him at ...

Last week, Medicare added patient satisfaction data to its hospital reporting website. This is progress, but it raises an interesting question: should patient satisfaction scores be case-mix adjusted?The motivation to include patient satisfaction data comes from the Institute of Medicine’s inclusion of “patient-centeredness” as one key component ...

In this month’s issue of the Joint Commission Journal of Quality and Patient Safety, I (with UCSF’s Adams Dudley and the American Hospital Association's Nancy Foster) tackle this provocative question. The answer may surprise you: yes (probably). The devil will be in the details.I hope you’ll have a chance to read the full article (the Joint ...

Great quote by USC cardiologist Leslie Saxon (a reporter reached her on her cell phone as Leslie was shopping) on this week’s NEJM study on delayed defibrillation: “You’re better off having your arrest [here] at Nordstrom [than in a hospital]… because there are 15 people around me.”You’ve probably seen the study, a detailed analysis of ...