MHM

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has too many new payment models for a practicing doctor to keep up with them all. But there are three that I think are most important for hospitalists to know something about: hospital value-based purchasing, MACRA-related models, and bundled payments. Here, I’ll focus on the latter, which unlike the first two, influences payment to both hospitals and physicians (as well as other providers).

Bundles for Different Diagnoses

Bundled payment programs are the most visible of CMS’s episode payment models (EPMs). There are currently voluntary bundle models (called Bundled Payments for Care Improvement, or BPCI) across many different diagnoses. And in some locales, there is a mandatory bundle program for hip and knee replacements that began in March 2016 (called Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement, or CCJR or just CJR).

These programs are set to expand significantly in the next few years. The Surgical Hip and Femur Fracture Treatment (SHFFT) becomes active in 2017 in some locales. It will essentially add hip and femur fractures requiring surgery to the existing CJR program. New bundles for acute myocardial infarction, either managed medically or with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and coronary bypass surgery will become mandatory in some parts of the country beginning July 2017.

How the Programs Work

CMS totals all Medicare dollars paid per patient historically for the relevant bundle. This includes payments to the hospital (e.g., the DRG payment) and all fees paid to physicians, therapists, visiting nurses, skilled nursing facilities, etc., from the time of hospital admission through 90 days after discharge. It then sets a target spend (or price) for that diagnosis that is about 3% below the historical average. Because it is based on the past track record of a hospital and its market (or region), the price will vary from place to place.

If, going forward, the Medicare spend for each patient is below the target, CMS pays that amount to the hospital. But if the spend is above the target, the hospital pays some or all of that amount to CMS. Presumably, hospitals will have negotiated with others, such as physicians, how such an “upside” or penalty payment will be divided between them.

It’s worth noting that all parties continue to bill, and are paid by Medicare, via the same fee-for-service arrangements currently in place. It is only at the time of a “true up” that an upside is paid or penalty assessed. And hospitals are eligible for upside payments only if they perform above a threshold on a few quality and patient satisfaction metrics.

The details of these programs are incredibly complicated, and I’m intentionally providing a very simple description of them here. I think that nearly all practicing clinicians should not try to learn and keep up with all of the precise details. They change often! Instead, it’s best to focus on the big picture only and rely on others at the hospital to keep track of the details.

Ways to Lower the Spend

These programs are intended to provide a significant financial incentive to find lower-cost ways to care for patients while still ensuring good care. Any successful effort to lower the cost should start by analyzing just what Medicare spends on each element of care over the more than 90 days each patient is in the bundle. For example, for hip and knee replacement patients, nearly half of the spend goes toward post-hospital services such as a skilled nursing facility and home nursing visits. So the best opportunity to reduce the spend may be to reduce utilization of these services where appropriate.

 

For patients in the bundles for coronary artery bypass grafting and acute myocardial infarction treated with PCI, only about 10% of the total spend goes to post-hospital services. For these, it might be more effective to focus cost reductions on other things.

Each organization will need to make its own decisions regarding where to focus cost-reduction efforts across the bundle. For many of us, that will mean moving away from a focus on traditional hospitalist-related cost-containment efforts like length of stay or pharmacy costs and instead looking at the bigger picture, including use of post-hospital services.

Some Things to Watch

I expect there will be a number of side effects of these payment models that hospitalists will care about. Doctors in different specialties, for example, might change their minds about whether they want to serve as attending physicians for “bundle patients.” One scenario is that if orthopedists have an opportunity to realize a significant financial upside, they may prefer to serve as attendings for hip fracture patients rather than leaving to hospitalists financially important decisions such as whether patients are discharged to a skilled nursing facility or home. We’ll just have to see how that plays out and be prepared to advocate for our position if different from other specialties.

Successful performance in bundles requires effective coordination of care across settings, and I’m hopeful this will benefit patients. Hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, for example, will need to work together more effectively to curb unnecessary days in the facilities and to reduce readmissions. Many hospitals have already begun developing a preferred network of skilled nursing facilities for referrals that is based on demonstrating good care and low returns to the hospital. Your hospital has probably already started doing this work even if you haven’t heard about it yet.

For me, one of the most concerning outcomes of bundles is the negotiations between providers regarding how an upside or penalty is to be shared among them. I suspect this won’t be contentious initially, but as the dollars at stake grow, it could lead to increasingly stressful negotiations and relationships.

And, lastly, like any payment model, bundles are “gameable,” especially bundles for medical diagnoses such as congestive heart failure or pneumonia, which can be gamed by lowering the threshold for admitting less-sick patients to inpatient status. The spend for these patients, who are less likely to require expensive post-hospital services or be readmitted, will lower the average spend in the bundle, increasing the chance of an upside payment for the providers. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has too many new payment models for a practicing doctor to keep up with them all. But there are three that I think are most important for hospitalists to know something about: hospital value-based purchasing, MACRA-related models, and bundled payments. Here, I’ll focus on the latter, which unlike the first two, influences payment to both hospitals and physicians (as well as other providers).

Bundles for Different Diagnoses

Bundled payment programs are the most visible of CMS’s episode payment models (EPMs). There are currently voluntary bundle models (called Bundled Payments for Care Improvement, or BPCI) across many different diagnoses. And in some locales, there is a mandatory bundle program for hip and knee replacements that began in March 2016 (called Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement, or CCJR or just CJR).

These programs are set to expand significantly in the next few years. The Surgical Hip and Femur Fracture Treatment (SHFFT) becomes active in 2017 in some locales. It will essentially add hip and femur fractures requiring surgery to the existing CJR program. New bundles for acute myocardial infarction, either managed medically or with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and coronary bypass surgery will become mandatory in some parts of the country beginning July 2017.

How the Programs Work

CMS totals all Medicare dollars paid per patient historically for the relevant bundle. This includes payments to the hospital (e.g., the DRG payment) and all fees paid to physicians, therapists, visiting nurses, skilled nursing facilities, etc., from the time of hospital admission through 90 days after discharge. It then sets a target spend (or price) for that diagnosis that is about 3% below the historical average. Because it is based on the past track record of a hospital and its market (or region), the price will vary from place to place.

If, going forward, the Medicare spend for each patient is below the target, CMS pays that amount to the hospital. But if the spend is above the target, the hospital pays some or all of that amount to CMS. Presumably, hospitals will have negotiated with others, such as physicians, how such an “upside” or penalty payment will be divided between them.

It’s worth noting that all parties continue to bill, and are paid by Medicare, via the same fee-for-service arrangements currently in place. It is only at the time of a “true up” that an upside is paid or penalty assessed. And hospitals are eligible for upside payments only if they perform above a threshold on a few quality and patient satisfaction metrics.

The details of these programs are incredibly complicated, and I’m intentionally providing a very simple description of them here. I think that nearly all practicing clinicians should not try to learn and keep up with all of the precise details. They change often! Instead, it’s best to focus on the big picture only and rely on others at the hospital to keep track of the details.

Ways to Lower the Spend

These programs are intended to provide a significant financial incentive to find lower-cost ways to care for patients while still ensuring good care. Any successful effort to lower the cost should start by analyzing just what Medicare spends on each element of care over the more than 90 days each patient is in the bundle. For example, for hip and knee replacement patients, nearly half of the spend goes toward post-hospital services such as a skilled nursing facility and home nursing visits. So the best opportunity to reduce the spend may be to reduce utilization of these services where appropriate.

 

For patients in the bundles for coronary artery bypass grafting and acute myocardial infarction treated with PCI, only about 10% of the total spend goes to post-hospital services. For these, it might be more effective to focus cost reductions on other things.

Each organization will need to make its own decisions regarding where to focus cost-reduction efforts across the bundle. For many of us, that will mean moving away from a focus on traditional hospitalist-related cost-containment efforts like length of stay or pharmacy costs and instead looking at the bigger picture, including use of post-hospital services.

Some Things to Watch

I expect there will be a number of side effects of these payment models that hospitalists will care about. Doctors in different specialties, for example, might change their minds about whether they want to serve as attending physicians for “bundle patients.” One scenario is that if orthopedists have an opportunity to realize a significant financial upside, they may prefer to serve as attendings for hip fracture patients rather than leaving to hospitalists financially important decisions such as whether patients are discharged to a skilled nursing facility or home. We’ll just have to see how that plays out and be prepared to advocate for our position if different from other specialties.

Successful performance in bundles requires effective coordination of care across settings, and I’m hopeful this will benefit patients. Hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, for example, will need to work together more effectively to curb unnecessary days in the facilities and to reduce readmissions. Many hospitals have already begun developing a preferred network of skilled nursing facilities for referrals that is based on demonstrating good care and low returns to the hospital. Your hospital has probably already started doing this work even if you haven’t heard about it yet.

For me, one of the most concerning outcomes of bundles is the negotiations between providers regarding how an upside or penalty is to be shared among them. I suspect this won’t be contentious initially, but as the dollars at stake grow, it could lead to increasingly stressful negotiations and relationships.

And, lastly, like any payment model, bundles are “gameable,” especially bundles for medical diagnoses such as congestive heart failure or pneumonia, which can be gamed by lowering the threshold for admitting less-sick patients to inpatient status. The spend for these patients, who are less likely to require expensive post-hospital services or be readmitted, will lower the average spend in the bundle, increasing the chance of an upside payment for the providers. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has too many new payment models for a practicing doctor to keep up with them all. But there are three that I think are most important for hospitalists to know something about: hospital value-based purchasing, MACRA-related models, and bundled payments. Here, I’ll focus on the latter, which unlike the first two, influences payment to both hospitals and physicians (as well as other providers).

Bundles for Different Diagnoses

Bundled payment programs are the most visible of CMS’s episode payment models (EPMs). There are currently voluntary bundle models (called Bundled Payments for Care Improvement, or BPCI) across many different diagnoses. And in some locales, there is a mandatory bundle program for hip and knee replacements that began in March 2016 (called Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement, or CCJR or just CJR).

These programs are set to expand significantly in the next few years. The Surgical Hip and Femur Fracture Treatment (SHFFT) becomes active in 2017 in some locales. It will essentially add hip and femur fractures requiring surgery to the existing CJR program. New bundles for acute myocardial infarction, either managed medically or with percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), and coronary bypass surgery will become mandatory in some parts of the country beginning July 2017.

How the Programs Work

CMS totals all Medicare dollars paid per patient historically for the relevant bundle. This includes payments to the hospital (e.g., the DRG payment) and all fees paid to physicians, therapists, visiting nurses, skilled nursing facilities, etc., from the time of hospital admission through 90 days after discharge. It then sets a target spend (or price) for that diagnosis that is about 3% below the historical average. Because it is based on the past track record of a hospital and its market (or region), the price will vary from place to place.

If, going forward, the Medicare spend for each patient is below the target, CMS pays that amount to the hospital. But if the spend is above the target, the hospital pays some or all of that amount to CMS. Presumably, hospitals will have negotiated with others, such as physicians, how such an “upside” or penalty payment will be divided between them.

It’s worth noting that all parties continue to bill, and are paid by Medicare, via the same fee-for-service arrangements currently in place. It is only at the time of a “true up” that an upside is paid or penalty assessed. And hospitals are eligible for upside payments only if they perform above a threshold on a few quality and patient satisfaction metrics.

The details of these programs are incredibly complicated, and I’m intentionally providing a very simple description of them here. I think that nearly all practicing clinicians should not try to learn and keep up with all of the precise details. They change often! Instead, it’s best to focus on the big picture only and rely on others at the hospital to keep track of the details.

Ways to Lower the Spend

These programs are intended to provide a significant financial incentive to find lower-cost ways to care for patients while still ensuring good care. Any successful effort to lower the cost should start by analyzing just what Medicare spends on each element of care over the more than 90 days each patient is in the bundle. For example, for hip and knee replacement patients, nearly half of the spend goes toward post-hospital services such as a skilled nursing facility and home nursing visits. So the best opportunity to reduce the spend may be to reduce utilization of these services where appropriate.

 

For patients in the bundles for coronary artery bypass grafting and acute myocardial infarction treated with PCI, only about 10% of the total spend goes to post-hospital services. For these, it might be more effective to focus cost reductions on other things.

Each organization will need to make its own decisions regarding where to focus cost-reduction efforts across the bundle. For many of us, that will mean moving away from a focus on traditional hospitalist-related cost-containment efforts like length of stay or pharmacy costs and instead looking at the bigger picture, including use of post-hospital services.

Some Things to Watch

I expect there will be a number of side effects of these payment models that hospitalists will care about. Doctors in different specialties, for example, might change their minds about whether they want to serve as attending physicians for “bundle patients.” One scenario is that if orthopedists have an opportunity to realize a significant financial upside, they may prefer to serve as attendings for hip fracture patients rather than leaving to hospitalists financially important decisions such as whether patients are discharged to a skilled nursing facility or home. We’ll just have to see how that plays out and be prepared to advocate for our position if different from other specialties.

Successful performance in bundles requires effective coordination of care across settings, and I’m hopeful this will benefit patients. Hospitals and skilled nursing facilities, for example, will need to work together more effectively to curb unnecessary days in the facilities and to reduce readmissions. Many hospitals have already begun developing a preferred network of skilled nursing facilities for referrals that is based on demonstrating good care and low returns to the hospital. Your hospital has probably already started doing this work even if you haven’t heard about it yet.

For me, one of the most concerning outcomes of bundles is the negotiations between providers regarding how an upside or penalty is to be shared among them. I suspect this won’t be contentious initially, but as the dollars at stake grow, it could lead to increasingly stressful negotiations and relationships.

And, lastly, like any payment model, bundles are “gameable,” especially bundles for medical diagnoses such as congestive heart failure or pneumonia, which can be gamed by lowering the threshold for admitting less-sick patients to inpatient status. The spend for these patients, who are less likely to require expensive post-hospital services or be readmitted, will lower the average spend in the bundle, increasing the chance of an upside payment for the providers. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

I first became aware of measuring customer satisfaction when a service manager at a car dealership explained in an upbeat way that I would be getting a survey and that any response by me other than the highest rating would result in significant negative consequences. I can recall being pleased with the service right up to the point the manager tried to extract a promise from me that I would provide “top box” answers.

What started with a car dealership survey has become a near avalanche of surveys from my credit card, bank, airlines, hotels, and other businesses. Each starts by assuring me that it will take only a minute or two to complete the survey, but if I completed every survey sent my way, it would add up to a significant amount of time. So I’ve stopped responding to nearly all of them, not so much as a form of protest but as part of my overall time-management efforts.

I imagine many of our patients see surveys from hospitals and other healthcare providers similarly: just another one to add to the pile. Patients in their 80s and 90s—a significant portion of hospitalist patients—probably interact a lot less with companies that send satisfaction surveys and so might be more attentive to ones from healthcare organizations. But I suspect that a reasonable portion of older patients rely on a family member to complete them, and this person, often a son or daughter, probably does get a lot of similar surveys. Surely, survey fatigue is influencing the results at least a little.

Healthcare Surveys: HCAHPS

For all the surveying going on, I find it pretty difficult to use HCAHPS results to guide patient-satisfaction improvement efforts. Sure, I can see how individual doctors or different physician groups score compared to one another and try to model my behaviors after the high performers. That is a really valuable thing to do, but it doesn’t get to the granular level I’d like.

One would hope the three physician-specific HCAHPS questions would support drilling down to more actionable information. But every hospitalist group I’ve seen always has the same pattern, scoring from lowest to highest as follows:

• How often did doctors explain things in a way you could understand?
• How often did doctors listen carefully to you?
• How often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect?

So I don’t think the difference in scores on these questions is very useful in guiding improvement efforts.

Looking beyond HCAHPS

For a few years, our hospitalist group added a very short survey to the brochure describing the practice. I still think that was good idea to ensure accurate attribution and more granular information, but it didn’t yield much value in practice because of a low response rate. Ultimately, we stopped using it because of our hospital risk manager’s concern any such survey could be construed as “coaching” patients in their HCAHPS responses, something the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services forbids.

Mark Rudolph, MD, vice president of physician development and patient experience at Sound Physicians, told me about their experience with their employed RNs using tablet computers to survey every patient the day following hospital admission (i.e., while patients were still in the hospital). It seems to me this could be a really valuable tool to provide very granular feedback at the outset of a patient stay when there is still time to address areas in which the patient is less satisfied. They found that for about 30% of patients, the survey uncovered something that could be fixed, such as providing another blanket, determining what time a test was likely to be done, etc. I bet for most patients the fact that a nurse cared enough to ask how things are going and try to remedy problems improved their HCAPHS scores.

 

Yet after some experience with this approach, Sound Physicians found that, for a number of reasons, this wasn’t as valuable as hoped. They now survey a smaller sample of patients and sometimes adjust the questions based on the known or suspected strengths and weaknesses of individual providers. For one doctor, for example, the survey might ask whether the doctor spent enough time with the patient; for another, it might ask if the doctor spoke clearly, etc.

Dr. Rudolph thinks having someone such as the lead hospitalist observe the doctor while on rounds might ultimately prove more valuable than administering a survey. It will be interesting to see how his group and others around the country evolve their approach to better understand each provider’s strengths and weaknesses and most effective ways to improve patient satisfaction.

How to Improve Patient Satisfaction?

In my April 2012 column, I wrote about several things for hospitalists to consider including in their patient-satisfaction improvement plan. And, of course, there are a lot of additional sources of ideas available just by searching the Internet.

I find it difficult to consistently implement a bundle of multiple different habits, such as always sitting or always rounding with the patient’s bedside nurse, etc. I acknowledge these are proven valuable strategies to improve scores, but I still find it hard to do them consistently.

For some of us, it might be better to pick one thing to focus on. And while I don’t have research data to prove it, I think the single most valuable thing to improve patient satisfaction with hospitalists is to phone patients after discharge. It isn’t as difficult as most assume, and it often leads patients (or the family member you reach) to thank you profusely for the call. I think hospitalists can really benefit from more expressions of gratitude from patients and families, and these calls often provide it.

I’ve learned a few lessons about making post-discharge calls that are detailed in my August 2012 column. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

I first became aware of measuring customer satisfaction when a service manager at a car dealership explained in an upbeat way that I would be getting a survey and that any response by me other than the highest rating would result in significant negative consequences. I can recall being pleased with the service right up to the point the manager tried to extract a promise from me that I would provide “top box” answers.

What started with a car dealership survey has become a near avalanche of surveys from my credit card, bank, airlines, hotels, and other businesses. Each starts by assuring me that it will take only a minute or two to complete the survey, but if I completed every survey sent my way, it would add up to a significant amount of time. So I’ve stopped responding to nearly all of them, not so much as a form of protest but as part of my overall time-management efforts.

I imagine many of our patients see surveys from hospitals and other healthcare providers similarly: just another one to add to the pile. Patients in their 80s and 90s—a significant portion of hospitalist patients—probably interact a lot less with companies that send satisfaction surveys and so might be more attentive to ones from healthcare organizations. But I suspect that a reasonable portion of older patients rely on a family member to complete them, and this person, often a son or daughter, probably does get a lot of similar surveys. Surely, survey fatigue is influencing the results at least a little.

Healthcare Surveys: HCAHPS

For all the surveying going on, I find it pretty difficult to use HCAHPS results to guide patient-satisfaction improvement efforts. Sure, I can see how individual doctors or different physician groups score compared to one another and try to model my behaviors after the high performers. That is a really valuable thing to do, but it doesn’t get to the granular level I’d like.

One would hope the three physician-specific HCAHPS questions would support drilling down to more actionable information. But every hospitalist group I’ve seen always has the same pattern, scoring from lowest to highest as follows:

• How often did doctors explain things in a way you could understand?
• How often did doctors listen carefully to you?
• How often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect?

So I don’t think the difference in scores on these questions is very useful in guiding improvement efforts.

Looking beyond HCAHPS

For a few years, our hospitalist group added a very short survey to the brochure describing the practice. I still think that was good idea to ensure accurate attribution and more granular information, but it didn’t yield much value in practice because of a low response rate. Ultimately, we stopped using it because of our hospital risk manager’s concern any such survey could be construed as “coaching” patients in their HCAHPS responses, something the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services forbids.

Mark Rudolph, MD, vice president of physician development and patient experience at Sound Physicians, told me about their experience with their employed RNs using tablet computers to survey every patient the day following hospital admission (i.e., while patients were still in the hospital). It seems to me this could be a really valuable tool to provide very granular feedback at the outset of a patient stay when there is still time to address areas in which the patient is less satisfied. They found that for about 30% of patients, the survey uncovered something that could be fixed, such as providing another blanket, determining what time a test was likely to be done, etc. I bet for most patients the fact that a nurse cared enough to ask how things are going and try to remedy problems improved their HCAPHS scores.

 

Yet after some experience with this approach, Sound Physicians found that, for a number of reasons, this wasn’t as valuable as hoped. They now survey a smaller sample of patients and sometimes adjust the questions based on the known or suspected strengths and weaknesses of individual providers. For one doctor, for example, the survey might ask whether the doctor spent enough time with the patient; for another, it might ask if the doctor spoke clearly, etc.

Dr. Rudolph thinks having someone such as the lead hospitalist observe the doctor while on rounds might ultimately prove more valuable than administering a survey. It will be interesting to see how his group and others around the country evolve their approach to better understand each provider’s strengths and weaknesses and most effective ways to improve patient satisfaction.

How to Improve Patient Satisfaction?

In my April 2012 column, I wrote about several things for hospitalists to consider including in their patient-satisfaction improvement plan. And, of course, there are a lot of additional sources of ideas available just by searching the Internet.

I find it difficult to consistently implement a bundle of multiple different habits, such as always sitting or always rounding with the patient’s bedside nurse, etc. I acknowledge these are proven valuable strategies to improve scores, but I still find it hard to do them consistently.

For some of us, it might be better to pick one thing to focus on. And while I don’t have research data to prove it, I think the single most valuable thing to improve patient satisfaction with hospitalists is to phone patients after discharge. It isn’t as difficult as most assume, and it often leads patients (or the family member you reach) to thank you profusely for the call. I think hospitalists can really benefit from more expressions of gratitude from patients and families, and these calls often provide it.

I’ve learned a few lessons about making post-discharge calls that are detailed in my August 2012 column. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

I first became aware of measuring customer satisfaction when a service manager at a car dealership explained in an upbeat way that I would be getting a survey and that any response by me other than the highest rating would result in significant negative consequences. I can recall being pleased with the service right up to the point the manager tried to extract a promise from me that I would provide “top box” answers.

What started with a car dealership survey has become a near avalanche of surveys from my credit card, bank, airlines, hotels, and other businesses. Each starts by assuring me that it will take only a minute or two to complete the survey, but if I completed every survey sent my way, it would add up to a significant amount of time. So I’ve stopped responding to nearly all of them, not so much as a form of protest but as part of my overall time-management efforts.

I imagine many of our patients see surveys from hospitals and other healthcare providers similarly: just another one to add to the pile. Patients in their 80s and 90s—a significant portion of hospitalist patients—probably interact a lot less with companies that send satisfaction surveys and so might be more attentive to ones from healthcare organizations. But I suspect that a reasonable portion of older patients rely on a family member to complete them, and this person, often a son or daughter, probably does get a lot of similar surveys. Surely, survey fatigue is influencing the results at least a little.

Healthcare Surveys: HCAHPS

For all the surveying going on, I find it pretty difficult to use HCAHPS results to guide patient-satisfaction improvement efforts. Sure, I can see how individual doctors or different physician groups score compared to one another and try to model my behaviors after the high performers. That is a really valuable thing to do, but it doesn’t get to the granular level I’d like.

One would hope the three physician-specific HCAHPS questions would support drilling down to more actionable information. But every hospitalist group I’ve seen always has the same pattern, scoring from lowest to highest as follows:

• How often did doctors explain things in a way you could understand?
• How often did doctors listen carefully to you?
• How often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect?

So I don’t think the difference in scores on these questions is very useful in guiding improvement efforts.

Looking beyond HCAHPS

For a few years, our hospitalist group added a very short survey to the brochure describing the practice. I still think that was good idea to ensure accurate attribution and more granular information, but it didn’t yield much value in practice because of a low response rate. Ultimately, we stopped using it because of our hospital risk manager’s concern any such survey could be construed as “coaching” patients in their HCAHPS responses, something the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services forbids.

Mark Rudolph, MD, vice president of physician development and patient experience at Sound Physicians, told me about their experience with their employed RNs using tablet computers to survey every patient the day following hospital admission (i.e., while patients were still in the hospital). It seems to me this could be a really valuable tool to provide very granular feedback at the outset of a patient stay when there is still time to address areas in which the patient is less satisfied. They found that for about 30% of patients, the survey uncovered something that could be fixed, such as providing another blanket, determining what time a test was likely to be done, etc. I bet for most patients the fact that a nurse cared enough to ask how things are going and try to remedy problems improved their HCAPHS scores.

 

Yet after some experience with this approach, Sound Physicians found that, for a number of reasons, this wasn’t as valuable as hoped. They now survey a smaller sample of patients and sometimes adjust the questions based on the known or suspected strengths and weaknesses of individual providers. For one doctor, for example, the survey might ask whether the doctor spent enough time with the patient; for another, it might ask if the doctor spoke clearly, etc.

Dr. Rudolph thinks having someone such as the lead hospitalist observe the doctor while on rounds might ultimately prove more valuable than administering a survey. It will be interesting to see how his group and others around the country evolve their approach to better understand each provider’s strengths and weaknesses and most effective ways to improve patient satisfaction.

How to Improve Patient Satisfaction?

In my April 2012 column, I wrote about several things for hospitalists to consider including in their patient-satisfaction improvement plan. And, of course, there are a lot of additional sources of ideas available just by searching the Internet.

I find it difficult to consistently implement a bundle of multiple different habits, such as always sitting or always rounding with the patient’s bedside nurse, etc. I acknowledge these are proven valuable strategies to improve scores, but I still find it hard to do them consistently.

For some of us, it might be better to pick one thing to focus on. And while I don’t have research data to prove it, I think the single most valuable thing to improve patient satisfaction with hospitalists is to phone patients after discharge. It isn’t as difficult as most assume, and it often leads patients (or the family member you reach) to thank you profusely for the call. I think hospitalists can really benefit from more expressions of gratitude from patients and families, and these calls often provide it.

I’ve learned a few lessons about making post-discharge calls that are detailed in my August 2012 column. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

sSHM’s 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report (SoHM) is now available, and it’s unquestionably the best source of detail regarding how hospital medicine groups are configured and operated.1

The SoHM is published in even years and combines data from two sources:

• Hospitalist data from Medical Group Management Association’s Physician Compensation and Productivity Survey. Within the SoHM, you will find the same figures for hospitalist compensation, production, and a few related metrics that are from the MGMA survey report.
• SHM’s survey of hospital medicine groups. This survey drills into significant detail on things like scope of clinical practice, staffing levels, work schedules, bonus metrics, CPT code distribution, roles for NPs and PAs, and the amount of financial support provided to the group.

There are several new topics in this year’s SoHM, including CME allowances, utilization of prolonged service codes, and charge capture methodologies being used by hospital medicine groups. My colleague, Leslie Flores, has been very involved in the survey for 10 years and has written a blog with more details.

One Caveat …

The mix of survey respondents varies and includes a much larger portion of hospital medicine groups employed by multi-state management companies than prior surveys. Even if a parameter hasn’t changed for any hospitalist group, the fact that responses come from different contingents of the hospitalist workforce can result in a different result from one survey to the next. It is difficult to be certain if variations across successive surveys reflect a real change in the marketplace or are a function of variation in the respondent population.

Now let’s review and analyze some of this year’s survey findings for hospital medicine groups caring for adults:

Financial Support Stayed Flat

The amount of financial support provided to a hospital medicine group per FTE has increased significantly in every prior survey. This money typically comes from the hospital that the hospital medicine group serves and is sometimes referred to as the “subsidy.” For hospital medicine groups serving adults, it was $139,000 in 2012 and $156,000 in 2014.

The current survey showed a median of $157,500, essentially unchanged from two years prior. This is either an aberration in the survey (e.g., a result of a different survey population) or an indicator that this amount has begun to level off. Clearly, there is an upper limit to the amount of financial support the marketplace can support, but from my experience working with hospitalist groups around the country, I haven’t seen evidence that we’ve reached that point. I suspect it is an aberration and future surveys will show a continued rising trend, though perhaps not as rapidly as in years past.

Compensation Method Is Evolving

A mean of 14.7% of compensation was tied to production, up from around 10% in prior surveys. And the portion tied to performance (e.g., patient satisfaction, quality metrics) was unchanged at 6%. It’s interesting that despite proliferation of pay-for-performance programs and increasing emphasis on quality and value, it is the productivity portion of compensation that increased. It’s hard to know if that is a meaningful trend.

Compensation Amount Continues to Increase

For hospitalists caring for adults, the median amount of compensation rose to $278,746, up from $253,000 in 2014, $234,000 in 2013, and $221,000 in 2011. These figures come from the MGMA survey, and the financial support figures above come from the separate SHM survey. That means it’s impossible to make firm conclusions about how the numbers do or don’t interrelate.

Don’t forget that surveys report all forms of compensation, including base, production, bonus, extra shifts, and other elements. This year’s $278,746 includes all the bonus dollars earned by each hospitalist in the survey. We can make a very rough guess at the bonus by multiplying the portion of total compensation tied to performance in the SHM survey (6%) by the total compensation ($278,746) from the MGMA survey, which comes to $13,397. But we still don’t know the portion of the total bonus dollars available that represents. My experience is that the total bonus dollars available is around $20,000 or more at most hospital medicine groups. Therefore, a doctor who earned $13,397 presumably didn’t meet all performance goals.

 

A Deeper Dive into Hospital Medicine Group Finances

It is really interesting to ponder where the dollars come from to fund higher hospitalist compensation if the financial support provided per FTE hasn’t increased. Perhaps hospitalists are generating more encounters, work relative value units (wRVUs), or professional fee collections?

Median professional fee collections were $213,000 this year, up from $151,000 in the prior survey two years ago. This increase could, in theory, fully fund the higher hospitalist compensation without the need for an increase in other sources of revenue.

So why are collections up? It could be because hospitalists are coding the average visit at a higher level: 2.02 wRVUs per encounter this year compared to 1.97 in 2014 and 1.91 in 2012. The survey can’t help distinguish whether this increase is because we’re seeing more complex patients or whether we’re improving our documentation to catch up with the complexity of the patients we’ve been seeing all along. I suspect it is both.

The increase in wRVUs per encounter, however, is offset by a continued downward trend in numbers of encounters: 1,684 this year compared to 1,850 in 2014 and 2,078 in 2012. The total wRVUs generated per hospitalist in a year stayed about the same at 4,247 compared to 4,298 in 2014.

The best explanation for why total collections are up would be that payor rates have increased. But Medicare, which accounts for about 60%–65% of the payor mix for most hospital medicine groups, hasn’t increased rates enough to explain this, and I’m not aware of other payor classes that have increased significantly. Another explanation could be that hospital medicine groups are simply doing a better job with billing and collections and other revenue-cycle management activities, resulting in increased revenue.

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the survey results don’t seem internally consistent. The data come from two different surveys, the response rate for each question varies, and other issues mean the survey just can’t provide that level of precision. We also need to keep in mind that analyses like I’ve provided here are only very rough explanations. But I think they’re still valuable to think about even if they don’t provide definitive answers. TH

Reference

1. 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report. Society of Hospital Medicine website. Accessed August 9, 2016.

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

sSHM’s 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report (SoHM) is now available, and it’s unquestionably the best source of detail regarding how hospital medicine groups are configured and operated.1

The SoHM is published in even years and combines data from two sources:

• Hospitalist data from Medical Group Management Association’s Physician Compensation and Productivity Survey. Within the SoHM, you will find the same figures for hospitalist compensation, production, and a few related metrics that are from the MGMA survey report.
• SHM’s survey of hospital medicine groups. This survey drills into significant detail on things like scope of clinical practice, staffing levels, work schedules, bonus metrics, CPT code distribution, roles for NPs and PAs, and the amount of financial support provided to the group.

There are several new topics in this year’s SoHM, including CME allowances, utilization of prolonged service codes, and charge capture methodologies being used by hospital medicine groups. My colleague, Leslie Flores, has been very involved in the survey for 10 years and has written a blog with more details.

One Caveat …

The mix of survey respondents varies and includes a much larger portion of hospital medicine groups employed by multi-state management companies than prior surveys. Even if a parameter hasn’t changed for any hospitalist group, the fact that responses come from different contingents of the hospitalist workforce can result in a different result from one survey to the next. It is difficult to be certain if variations across successive surveys reflect a real change in the marketplace or are a function of variation in the respondent population.

Now let’s review and analyze some of this year’s survey findings for hospital medicine groups caring for adults:

Financial Support Stayed Flat

The amount of financial support provided to a hospital medicine group per FTE has increased significantly in every prior survey. This money typically comes from the hospital that the hospital medicine group serves and is sometimes referred to as the “subsidy.” For hospital medicine groups serving adults, it was $139,000 in 2012 and $156,000 in 2014.

The current survey showed a median of $157,500, essentially unchanged from two years prior. This is either an aberration in the survey (e.g., a result of a different survey population) or an indicator that this amount has begun to level off. Clearly, there is an upper limit to the amount of financial support the marketplace can support, but from my experience working with hospitalist groups around the country, I haven’t seen evidence that we’ve reached that point. I suspect it is an aberration and future surveys will show a continued rising trend, though perhaps not as rapidly as in years past.

Compensation Method Is Evolving

A mean of 14.7% of compensation was tied to production, up from around 10% in prior surveys. And the portion tied to performance (e.g., patient satisfaction, quality metrics) was unchanged at 6%. It’s interesting that despite proliferation of pay-for-performance programs and increasing emphasis on quality and value, it is the productivity portion of compensation that increased. It’s hard to know if that is a meaningful trend.

Compensation Amount Continues to Increase

For hospitalists caring for adults, the median amount of compensation rose to $278,746, up from $253,000 in 2014, $234,000 in 2013, and $221,000 in 2011. These figures come from the MGMA survey, and the financial support figures above come from the separate SHM survey. That means it’s impossible to make firm conclusions about how the numbers do or don’t interrelate.

Don’t forget that surveys report all forms of compensation, including base, production, bonus, extra shifts, and other elements. This year’s $278,746 includes all the bonus dollars earned by each hospitalist in the survey. We can make a very rough guess at the bonus by multiplying the portion of total compensation tied to performance in the SHM survey (6%) by the total compensation ($278,746) from the MGMA survey, which comes to $13,397. But we still don’t know the portion of the total bonus dollars available that represents. My experience is that the total bonus dollars available is around $20,000 or more at most hospital medicine groups. Therefore, a doctor who earned $13,397 presumably didn’t meet all performance goals.

 

A Deeper Dive into Hospital Medicine Group Finances

It is really interesting to ponder where the dollars come from to fund higher hospitalist compensation if the financial support provided per FTE hasn’t increased. Perhaps hospitalists are generating more encounters, work relative value units (wRVUs), or professional fee collections?

Median professional fee collections were $213,000 this year, up from $151,000 in the prior survey two years ago. This increase could, in theory, fully fund the higher hospitalist compensation without the need for an increase in other sources of revenue.

So why are collections up? It could be because hospitalists are coding the average visit at a higher level: 2.02 wRVUs per encounter this year compared to 1.97 in 2014 and 1.91 in 2012. The survey can’t help distinguish whether this increase is because we’re seeing more complex patients or whether we’re improving our documentation to catch up with the complexity of the patients we’ve been seeing all along. I suspect it is both.

The increase in wRVUs per encounter, however, is offset by a continued downward trend in numbers of encounters: 1,684 this year compared to 1,850 in 2014 and 2,078 in 2012. The total wRVUs generated per hospitalist in a year stayed about the same at 4,247 compared to 4,298 in 2014.

The best explanation for why total collections are up would be that payor rates have increased. But Medicare, which accounts for about 60%–65% of the payor mix for most hospital medicine groups, hasn’t increased rates enough to explain this, and I’m not aware of other payor classes that have increased significantly. Another explanation could be that hospital medicine groups are simply doing a better job with billing and collections and other revenue-cycle management activities, resulting in increased revenue.

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the survey results don’t seem internally consistent. The data come from two different surveys, the response rate for each question varies, and other issues mean the survey just can’t provide that level of precision. We also need to keep in mind that analyses like I’ve provided here are only very rough explanations. But I think they’re still valuable to think about even if they don’t provide definitive answers. TH

Reference

1. 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report. Society of Hospital Medicine website. Accessed August 9, 2016.

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

sSHM’s 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report (SoHM) is now available, and it’s unquestionably the best source of detail regarding how hospital medicine groups are configured and operated.1

The SoHM is published in even years and combines data from two sources:

• Hospitalist data from Medical Group Management Association’s Physician Compensation and Productivity Survey. Within the SoHM, you will find the same figures for hospitalist compensation, production, and a few related metrics that are from the MGMA survey report.
• SHM’s survey of hospital medicine groups. This survey drills into significant detail on things like scope of clinical practice, staffing levels, work schedules, bonus metrics, CPT code distribution, roles for NPs and PAs, and the amount of financial support provided to the group.

There are several new topics in this year’s SoHM, including CME allowances, utilization of prolonged service codes, and charge capture methodologies being used by hospital medicine groups. My colleague, Leslie Flores, has been very involved in the survey for 10 years and has written a blog with more details.

One Caveat …

The mix of survey respondents varies and includes a much larger portion of hospital medicine groups employed by multi-state management companies than prior surveys. Even if a parameter hasn’t changed for any hospitalist group, the fact that responses come from different contingents of the hospitalist workforce can result in a different result from one survey to the next. It is difficult to be certain if variations across successive surveys reflect a real change in the marketplace or are a function of variation in the respondent population.

Now let’s review and analyze some of this year’s survey findings for hospital medicine groups caring for adults:

Financial Support Stayed Flat

The amount of financial support provided to a hospital medicine group per FTE has increased significantly in every prior survey. This money typically comes from the hospital that the hospital medicine group serves and is sometimes referred to as the “subsidy.” For hospital medicine groups serving adults, it was $139,000 in 2012 and $156,000 in 2014.

The current survey showed a median of $157,500, essentially unchanged from two years prior. This is either an aberration in the survey (e.g., a result of a different survey population) or an indicator that this amount has begun to level off. Clearly, there is an upper limit to the amount of financial support the marketplace can support, but from my experience working with hospitalist groups around the country, I haven’t seen evidence that we’ve reached that point. I suspect it is an aberration and future surveys will show a continued rising trend, though perhaps not as rapidly as in years past.

Compensation Method Is Evolving

A mean of 14.7% of compensation was tied to production, up from around 10% in prior surveys. And the portion tied to performance (e.g., patient satisfaction, quality metrics) was unchanged at 6%. It’s interesting that despite proliferation of pay-for-performance programs and increasing emphasis on quality and value, it is the productivity portion of compensation that increased. It’s hard to know if that is a meaningful trend.

Compensation Amount Continues to Increase

For hospitalists caring for adults, the median amount of compensation rose to $278,746, up from $253,000 in 2014, $234,000 in 2013, and $221,000 in 2011. These figures come from the MGMA survey, and the financial support figures above come from the separate SHM survey. That means it’s impossible to make firm conclusions about how the numbers do or don’t interrelate.

Don’t forget that surveys report all forms of compensation, including base, production, bonus, extra shifts, and other elements. This year’s $278,746 includes all the bonus dollars earned by each hospitalist in the survey. We can make a very rough guess at the bonus by multiplying the portion of total compensation tied to performance in the SHM survey (6%) by the total compensation ($278,746) from the MGMA survey, which comes to $13,397. But we still don’t know the portion of the total bonus dollars available that represents. My experience is that the total bonus dollars available is around $20,000 or more at most hospital medicine groups. Therefore, a doctor who earned $13,397 presumably didn’t meet all performance goals.

 

A Deeper Dive into Hospital Medicine Group Finances

It is really interesting to ponder where the dollars come from to fund higher hospitalist compensation if the financial support provided per FTE hasn’t increased. Perhaps hospitalists are generating more encounters, work relative value units (wRVUs), or professional fee collections?

Median professional fee collections were $213,000 this year, up from $151,000 in the prior survey two years ago. This increase could, in theory, fully fund the higher hospitalist compensation without the need for an increase in other sources of revenue.

So why are collections up? It could be because hospitalists are coding the average visit at a higher level: 2.02 wRVUs per encounter this year compared to 1.97 in 2014 and 1.91 in 2012. The survey can’t help distinguish whether this increase is because we’re seeing more complex patients or whether we’re improving our documentation to catch up with the complexity of the patients we’ve been seeing all along. I suspect it is both.

The increase in wRVUs per encounter, however, is offset by a continued downward trend in numbers of encounters: 1,684 this year compared to 1,850 in 2014 and 2,078 in 2012. The total wRVUs generated per hospitalist in a year stayed about the same at 4,247 compared to 4,298 in 2014.

The best explanation for why total collections are up would be that payor rates have increased. But Medicare, which accounts for about 60%–65% of the payor mix for most hospital medicine groups, hasn’t increased rates enough to explain this, and I’m not aware of other payor classes that have increased significantly. Another explanation could be that hospital medicine groups are simply doing a better job with billing and collections and other revenue-cycle management activities, resulting in increased revenue.

I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the survey results don’t seem internally consistent. The data come from two different surveys, the response rate for each question varies, and other issues mean the survey just can’t provide that level of precision. We also need to keep in mind that analyses like I’ve provided here are only very rough explanations. But I think they’re still valuable to think about even if they don’t provide definitive answers. TH

Reference

1. 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report. Society of Hospital Medicine website. Accessed August 9, 2016.

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Linden Spital, NP, a psychiatric mental-health nurse practitioner, staffs the Psychiatric Consultation Liaison Service at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Nearly every hospital larger than about 200 beds, she says, could benefit from a similar service, and hospitalists could play an important role in creating it.

I wrote about the idea for a generally similar service in my April 2015 column, but at the time, I didn’t know of an institution that had something like this in place.

Along with her hospitalist colleagues, Anupama (Anu) Goyal, MBChB, and Rob Chang, MD, Linden has launched a service to provide assistance to bedside caregivers dealing with very difficult patients (eg, those who are verbally or physically threatening to staff, unreasonably demanding and angry, have bizarre behavior, etc.).

Sample Cases

Two recent cases illustrate the role of the service. A female patient in her 60s had several admissions characterized by what many caregivers agreed were unreasonably precise demands regarding how her care should be delivered. She was verbally abusive of caregivers, especially those who were young or of a different race, and her family member tended to reinforce these maladaptive behaviors. Staff found it very stressful to care for her and had concerns that her care suffered as a result.

Linden served as a resource and support for staff, plus worked with providers to set limits on the patient and family behavior and to separate patient behaviors that were and weren’t modifiable. Linden’s efforts helped clarify the goals for the patient’s care and reduced staff distress. Even though the patient’s behavior didn’t change significantly, staff anecdotally reported less distress and concern that the patient’s care suffered as a result.

Another case involved a man in his 50s who had a progressive neurodegenerative disease and was admitted because of increasingly aggressive behavior in his skilled-nursing facility (SNF). Providers at the SNF attributed the poor behavior to changes in medications. His behavior was very difficult to manage, and staff asked for Linden’s help. She worked with the patient and realized much of his difficult behavior stemmed from his frustration with communicating verbally because of his neurologic disease. Rather than pursue increasing psychotropics, Linden promoted efforts to develop a system of hand signals the patient could use to communicate needs. His behavior improved, presumably by reducing his own frustration and improving his autonomy.

Atypical Consults

This psychiatric consultation liaison service has some overlap with traditional inpatient psychiatry services, but it is configured so that the caregiver is essentially embedded on the medical units of the hospital and assists in the care of patients who wouldn’t typically be appropriate for a psychiatry consult. For example, patients and/or families who act out because of anger over being on observation status are appropriate for this service but would usually not be appropriate for a psychiatry consult. The two examples above aren’t ideal cases for a standard psychiatry consult; however, the attending hospitalist needed help nonetheless.

Operational Details

The liaison service started with a successful trial on two hospital units in 2013. Linden began serving as the sole clinician on the service in January 2015. She is available during the daytime on weekdays, and any staff can request her participation in the care of a patient. Her visits are billed when appropriate, but many aren’t billed (for example, if her primary work was to conference with staff regarding management of a patient).

Consults can be requested by anyone (nurses, etc., as well as physicians, though only the latter would be billable) via an electronic health record entry that helps ensure whether the request is for this service versus the inpatient psychiatry service. The order includes a standard list of potential reasons for consult that can be selected and amplified with free text comments. She also receives verbal consult requests as she moves through the hospital.

 

Linden’s position is budgeted through the psychiatry department and funded by the hospital with only modest professional fee collections.

An Idea That Is Catching On?

Anu Goyal made me aware of a study from 2004 that summarized findings from experience with a similar service at Washington University in St. Louis, but the service was cancelled after a short time due to its cost.1 She also found a few studies from the 1990s and a 2001 study from Australia that report on a similar service.

But maybe the idea is catching on again, at least a little.

On April 25, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Hospitals Test Putting Psychiatrists on Medical Wards.”2 It described programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. They share some similarities with the service at the University of Michigan. However, according to the article, the three big-city programs tilt more toward a traditional consultation model than what Linden does.

I think every hospital should be thinking about a service other than traditional consult psychiatry that could help with challenging patient behavior. The University of Michigan model or similar ones seem like a good place to start. TH

Reference

1. Yakimo R, Kurlowicz L, Murray R. Evaluation of outcomes in psychiatric consultation-liaison nursing practice. Arch Psychiatr Nurs. 2004;18(6):215-227.

   2. Ladnado L. Hospitals test putting psychiatrists on medical wards. The Wall Street Journal website. Accessed July 3, 2016.

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Linden Spital, NP, a psychiatric mental-health nurse practitioner, staffs the Psychiatric Consultation Liaison Service at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Nearly every hospital larger than about 200 beds, she says, could benefit from a similar service, and hospitalists could play an important role in creating it.

I wrote about the idea for a generally similar service in my April 2015 column, but at the time, I didn’t know of an institution that had something like this in place.

Along with her hospitalist colleagues, Anupama (Anu) Goyal, MBChB, and Rob Chang, MD, Linden has launched a service to provide assistance to bedside caregivers dealing with very difficult patients (eg, those who are verbally or physically threatening to staff, unreasonably demanding and angry, have bizarre behavior, etc.).

Sample Cases

Two recent cases illustrate the role of the service. A female patient in her 60s had several admissions characterized by what many caregivers agreed were unreasonably precise demands regarding how her care should be delivered. She was verbally abusive of caregivers, especially those who were young or of a different race, and her family member tended to reinforce these maladaptive behaviors. Staff found it very stressful to care for her and had concerns that her care suffered as a result.

Linden served as a resource and support for staff, plus worked with providers to set limits on the patient and family behavior and to separate patient behaviors that were and weren’t modifiable. Linden’s efforts helped clarify the goals for the patient’s care and reduced staff distress. Even though the patient’s behavior didn’t change significantly, staff anecdotally reported less distress and concern that the patient’s care suffered as a result.

Another case involved a man in his 50s who had a progressive neurodegenerative disease and was admitted because of increasingly aggressive behavior in his skilled-nursing facility (SNF). Providers at the SNF attributed the poor behavior to changes in medications. His behavior was very difficult to manage, and staff asked for Linden’s help. She worked with the patient and realized much of his difficult behavior stemmed from his frustration with communicating verbally because of his neurologic disease. Rather than pursue increasing psychotropics, Linden promoted efforts to develop a system of hand signals the patient could use to communicate needs. His behavior improved, presumably by reducing his own frustration and improving his autonomy.

Atypical Consults

This psychiatric consultation liaison service has some overlap with traditional inpatient psychiatry services, but it is configured so that the caregiver is essentially embedded on the medical units of the hospital and assists in the care of patients who wouldn’t typically be appropriate for a psychiatry consult. For example, patients and/or families who act out because of anger over being on observation status are appropriate for this service but would usually not be appropriate for a psychiatry consult. The two examples above aren’t ideal cases for a standard psychiatry consult; however, the attending hospitalist needed help nonetheless.

Operational Details

The liaison service started with a successful trial on two hospital units in 2013. Linden began serving as the sole clinician on the service in January 2015. She is available during the daytime on weekdays, and any staff can request her participation in the care of a patient. Her visits are billed when appropriate, but many aren’t billed (for example, if her primary work was to conference with staff regarding management of a patient).

Consults can be requested by anyone (nurses, etc., as well as physicians, though only the latter would be billable) via an electronic health record entry that helps ensure whether the request is for this service versus the inpatient psychiatry service. The order includes a standard list of potential reasons for consult that can be selected and amplified with free text comments. She also receives verbal consult requests as she moves through the hospital.

 

Linden’s position is budgeted through the psychiatry department and funded by the hospital with only modest professional fee collections.

An Idea That Is Catching On?

Anu Goyal made me aware of a study from 2004 that summarized findings from experience with a similar service at Washington University in St. Louis, but the service was cancelled after a short time due to its cost.1 She also found a few studies from the 1990s and a 2001 study from Australia that report on a similar service.

But maybe the idea is catching on again, at least a little.

On April 25, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Hospitals Test Putting Psychiatrists on Medical Wards.”2 It described programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. They share some similarities with the service at the University of Michigan. However, according to the article, the three big-city programs tilt more toward a traditional consultation model than what Linden does.

I think every hospital should be thinking about a service other than traditional consult psychiatry that could help with challenging patient behavior. The University of Michigan model or similar ones seem like a good place to start. TH

Reference

1. Yakimo R, Kurlowicz L, Murray R. Evaluation of outcomes in psychiatric consultation-liaison nursing practice. Arch Psychiatr Nurs. 2004;18(6):215-227.

   2. Ladnado L. Hospitals test putting psychiatrists on medical wards. The Wall Street Journal website. Accessed July 3, 2016.

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Linden Spital, NP, a psychiatric mental-health nurse practitioner, staffs the Psychiatric Consultation Liaison Service at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Nearly every hospital larger than about 200 beds, she says, could benefit from a similar service, and hospitalists could play an important role in creating it.

I wrote about the idea for a generally similar service in my April 2015 column, but at the time, I didn’t know of an institution that had something like this in place.

Along with her hospitalist colleagues, Anupama (Anu) Goyal, MBChB, and Rob Chang, MD, Linden has launched a service to provide assistance to bedside caregivers dealing with very difficult patients (eg, those who are verbally or physically threatening to staff, unreasonably demanding and angry, have bizarre behavior, etc.).

Sample Cases

Two recent cases illustrate the role of the service. A female patient in her 60s had several admissions characterized by what many caregivers agreed were unreasonably precise demands regarding how her care should be delivered. She was verbally abusive of caregivers, especially those who were young or of a different race, and her family member tended to reinforce these maladaptive behaviors. Staff found it very stressful to care for her and had concerns that her care suffered as a result.

Linden served as a resource and support for staff, plus worked with providers to set limits on the patient and family behavior and to separate patient behaviors that were and weren’t modifiable. Linden’s efforts helped clarify the goals for the patient’s care and reduced staff distress. Even though the patient’s behavior didn’t change significantly, staff anecdotally reported less distress and concern that the patient’s care suffered as a result.

Another case involved a man in his 50s who had a progressive neurodegenerative disease and was admitted because of increasingly aggressive behavior in his skilled-nursing facility (SNF). Providers at the SNF attributed the poor behavior to changes in medications. His behavior was very difficult to manage, and staff asked for Linden’s help. She worked with the patient and realized much of his difficult behavior stemmed from his frustration with communicating verbally because of his neurologic disease. Rather than pursue increasing psychotropics, Linden promoted efforts to develop a system of hand signals the patient could use to communicate needs. His behavior improved, presumably by reducing his own frustration and improving his autonomy.

Atypical Consults

This psychiatric consultation liaison service has some overlap with traditional inpatient psychiatry services, but it is configured so that the caregiver is essentially embedded on the medical units of the hospital and assists in the care of patients who wouldn’t typically be appropriate for a psychiatry consult. For example, patients and/or families who act out because of anger over being on observation status are appropriate for this service but would usually not be appropriate for a psychiatry consult. The two examples above aren’t ideal cases for a standard psychiatry consult; however, the attending hospitalist needed help nonetheless.

Operational Details

The liaison service started with a successful trial on two hospital units in 2013. Linden began serving as the sole clinician on the service in January 2015. She is available during the daytime on weekdays, and any staff can request her participation in the care of a patient. Her visits are billed when appropriate, but many aren’t billed (for example, if her primary work was to conference with staff regarding management of a patient).

Consults can be requested by anyone (nurses, etc., as well as physicians, though only the latter would be billable) via an electronic health record entry that helps ensure whether the request is for this service versus the inpatient psychiatry service. The order includes a standard list of potential reasons for consult that can be selected and amplified with free text comments. She also receives verbal consult requests as she moves through the hospital.

 

Linden’s position is budgeted through the psychiatry department and funded by the hospital with only modest professional fee collections.

An Idea That Is Catching On?

Anu Goyal made me aware of a study from 2004 that summarized findings from experience with a similar service at Washington University in St. Louis, but the service was cancelled after a short time due to its cost.1 She also found a few studies from the 1990s and a 2001 study from Australia that report on a similar service.

But maybe the idea is catching on again, at least a little.

On April 25, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Hospitals Test Putting Psychiatrists on Medical Wards.”2 It described programs at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. They share some similarities with the service at the University of Michigan. However, according to the article, the three big-city programs tilt more toward a traditional consultation model than what Linden does.

I think every hospital should be thinking about a service other than traditional consult psychiatry that could help with challenging patient behavior. The University of Michigan model or similar ones seem like a good place to start. TH

Reference

1. Yakimo R, Kurlowicz L, Murray R. Evaluation of outcomes in psychiatric consultation-liaison nursing practice. Arch Psychiatr Nurs. 2004;18(6):215-227.

   2. Ladnado L. Hospitals test putting psychiatrists on medical wards. The Wall Street Journal website. Accessed July 3, 2016.

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

As the SHM Leadership Academy’s course director, I always find time to visit the Mastering Teamwork course because each year, even though it’s slightly different, it’s still exciting. In past meetings, I’ve learned from talented faculty how lessons in college football relate to practice, been provided guidance on how to recognize what makes me tick, and heard firsthand perspective on large-scale medical events like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and even the Boston Marathon tragedy. I always learn a few new things. As they say, repetition is the mother of learning, and the Mastering Teamwork course never fails to make that learning a lot of fun.

As a professor of medicine, I’ve always liked learning. But I truly enjoy learning when it’s fun and exciting. To me, this mixture of academia and excitement is the epitome of Mastering Teamwork. When two of the faculty, Mark Williams, MD, MHM, and Amit Prachand, MEng, needed to teach about teamwork, they decided to develop an interactive session. While in Hawaii, they constructed a “river” out of cardboard and props for Mastering Teamwork participants to navigate. It was a hands-on lesson in group dynamics. It was educational and, most of all, a hoot.

Kay Cannon, MBA, taught me that the skills I used in previous job levels may not be the drivers of my success in today’s job (or tomorrow’s), and Jeffrey Wiese, MD, MHM, and Lenny Marcus, PhD, are two of the best storytellers I know and have me on the edge of my seat every time I hear them speak. Their life experiences make excellent fodder for hospitalist leadership pearls and are more riveting than Downton Abbey (or whatever drama is your favorite).

I look forward to seeing everyone at Disney’s BoardWalk Inn in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, from October 24 to 27 to experience what I know will be a memorable, enjoyable learning experience for all.

To register, visit www.shmleadershipacademy.org. TH

---

Dr. Howell is SHM’s senior physician advisor and course director for SHM’s Leadership Academy.

As the SHM Leadership Academy’s course director, I always find time to visit the Mastering Teamwork course because each year, even though it’s slightly different, it’s still exciting. In past meetings, I’ve learned from talented faculty how lessons in college football relate to practice, been provided guidance on how to recognize what makes me tick, and heard firsthand perspective on large-scale medical events like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and even the Boston Marathon tragedy. I always learn a few new things. As they say, repetition is the mother of learning, and the Mastering Teamwork course never fails to make that learning a lot of fun.

As a professor of medicine, I’ve always liked learning. But I truly enjoy learning when it’s fun and exciting. To me, this mixture of academia and excitement is the epitome of Mastering Teamwork. When two of the faculty, Mark Williams, MD, MHM, and Amit Prachand, MEng, needed to teach about teamwork, they decided to develop an interactive session. While in Hawaii, they constructed a “river” out of cardboard and props for Mastering Teamwork participants to navigate. It was a hands-on lesson in group dynamics. It was educational and, most of all, a hoot.

Kay Cannon, MBA, taught me that the skills I used in previous job levels may not be the drivers of my success in today’s job (or tomorrow’s), and Jeffrey Wiese, MD, MHM, and Lenny Marcus, PhD, are two of the best storytellers I know and have me on the edge of my seat every time I hear them speak. Their life experiences make excellent fodder for hospitalist leadership pearls and are more riveting than Downton Abbey (or whatever drama is your favorite).

I look forward to seeing everyone at Disney’s BoardWalk Inn in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, from October 24 to 27 to experience what I know will be a memorable, enjoyable learning experience for all.

To register, visit www.shmleadershipacademy.org. TH

---

Dr. Howell is SHM’s senior physician advisor and course director for SHM’s Leadership Academy.

As the SHM Leadership Academy’s course director, I always find time to visit the Mastering Teamwork course because each year, even though it’s slightly different, it’s still exciting. In past meetings, I’ve learned from talented faculty how lessons in college football relate to practice, been provided guidance on how to recognize what makes me tick, and heard firsthand perspective on large-scale medical events like 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and even the Boston Marathon tragedy. I always learn a few new things. As they say, repetition is the mother of learning, and the Mastering Teamwork course never fails to make that learning a lot of fun.

As a professor of medicine, I’ve always liked learning. But I truly enjoy learning when it’s fun and exciting. To me, this mixture of academia and excitement is the epitome of Mastering Teamwork. When two of the faculty, Mark Williams, MD, MHM, and Amit Prachand, MEng, needed to teach about teamwork, they decided to develop an interactive session. While in Hawaii, they constructed a “river” out of cardboard and props for Mastering Teamwork participants to navigate. It was a hands-on lesson in group dynamics. It was educational and, most of all, a hoot.

Kay Cannon, MBA, taught me that the skills I used in previous job levels may not be the drivers of my success in today’s job (or tomorrow’s), and Jeffrey Wiese, MD, MHM, and Lenny Marcus, PhD, are two of the best storytellers I know and have me on the edge of my seat every time I hear them speak. Their life experiences make excellent fodder for hospitalist leadership pearls and are more riveting than Downton Abbey (or whatever drama is your favorite).

I look forward to seeing everyone at Disney’s BoardWalk Inn in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, from October 24 to 27 to experience what I know will be a memorable, enjoyable learning experience for all.

To register, visit www.shmleadershipacademy.org. TH

---

Dr. Howell is SHM’s senior physician advisor and course director for SHM’s Leadership Academy.

I visited during a hot Florida summer in the mid 1990s and could readily see that the practice was great in most respects. The large multispecialty group had recruited talented hospitalists and had put in place effective operational practices. All seemed to be going well, but inappropriate overhead allocation was undermining the success of their efforts.

The multispecialty group employing the hospitalists used the same formula to allocate overhead to the hospitalists that was in place for other specialties. And compensation was essentially each doctor’s collections minus overhead, leaving the hospitalists with annual compensation much lower than they could reasonably expect. With the group deducting from hospitalist collections the same overhead expenses charged to other specialties, including a share of outpatient buildings, staff, and supplies, the hospitalists were paying a lot for services they weren’t using. This group corrected the errors but not until some talented doctors had resigned because of the compensation formula.

This was a common mistake made by multispecialty groups that employed hospitalists years ago. Today, nearly all such groups assess an appropriately smaller portion of overhead to hospitalists than office-based doctors.

Typical Hospitalist Overhead

It is still tricky to correctly assess and allocate hospitalist overhead. This meaningfully influences the apparent total cost of the program and hence the amount of support paid by the hospital or other entity. (This support is often referred to as a “subsidy,” though I don’t care for that term because of its negative connotation.)

For example, costs for billing and collections services, malpractice insurance, temporary staffing (locums), and an overhead allocation that pays for things like the salaries of medical group administrators and clerical staff may or may not be attributed to the hospitalist budget or “cost center.” This is one of several factors that make it awfully tricky to compare the total costs and/or hospital financial support between different hospitalist groups.

SHM’s State of Hospital Medicine report includes detailed instructions regarding which expenses the survey respondents should include as overhead costs, but I think it’s safe to assume that not all responses are fully compliant. I’m confident there is a meaningful amount of “noise” in these figures. Numbers like the median financial support per FTE hospitalist per year ($156,063 in the 2014 report) should only be used as a guideline and not a precise number that might apply in your setting. My reasoning is that the collections rate and compensation amount can vary tremendously from one practice to another and will typically have a far larger influence on the amount of financial support provided by the hospital than which expenses are or aren’t included as overhead. But I am confining this discussion to the latter.

APC Costs: One Factor Driving Increased Support

SHM has been surveying the financial support per physician FTE for about 15 years, and it has shown a steady increase. It was about $60,000 per FTE annually when first surveyed in the late 1990s; it has gone up every survey since. The best explanation for this seems to an increase in hospitalist compensation while production and revenue have remained relatively flat.

There likely are many other factors in play. One important one is physician assistant and nurse practitioner costs. The survey divides the total annual support provided to the whole hospitalist practice by the total number of physician FTEs. NPs and PAs are becoming more common in hospitalist groups; 65% of groups included them in 2014, up from 54% in 2012. Yet the cost of employing them, primarily salary and benefits, appears in the numerator but not the denominator of the support per physician FTE figure.

 

This means a group that adds NP/PA staffing, which typically requires an accompanying increase in hospital financial support, while maintaining the same number of physician FTEs will show an increase in hospital support per physician FTE. But this fails to capture that the practice’s work product (i.e., patients seen) has increased as a result of increasing its clinical staff.

This is a tricky issue to fix. SHM’s Practice Analysis Committee, which manages the survey, is aware of the issue and may make future adjustments to account for it. The best method might be to convert total staffing by physicians and NP/PAs into physician-equivalent FTEs (I described one method for doing this in my August 2009 column titled “Volume Variables”) or some other method that clearly accounts for both physician and NP/PA staffing levels. Other alternatives would be to divide the annual support by the number of billed encounters or some other measure of “work output” or to report percent of the total practice revenue that comes from hospital support versus professional fee collections and other sources.

Why Allocation of NP/PA Costs and FTEs Matter

Another way to think of this issue is that including NP/PA costs but not their work (FTEs) in the financial support per FTE figure overlooks the important work they can do for a hospitalist practice. And it can lead one to conclude hospitals’ costs per clinician FTE are rising faster than is actually the case.

This is only one of the tricky issues in accurately understanding hospitalist overhead and costs to the hospital they serve. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

I visited during a hot Florida summer in the mid 1990s and could readily see that the practice was great in most respects. The large multispecialty group had recruited talented hospitalists and had put in place effective operational practices. All seemed to be going well, but inappropriate overhead allocation was undermining the success of their efforts.

The multispecialty group employing the hospitalists used the same formula to allocate overhead to the hospitalists that was in place for other specialties. And compensation was essentially each doctor’s collections minus overhead, leaving the hospitalists with annual compensation much lower than they could reasonably expect. With the group deducting from hospitalist collections the same overhead expenses charged to other specialties, including a share of outpatient buildings, staff, and supplies, the hospitalists were paying a lot for services they weren’t using. This group corrected the errors but not until some talented doctors had resigned because of the compensation formula.

This was a common mistake made by multispecialty groups that employed hospitalists years ago. Today, nearly all such groups assess an appropriately smaller portion of overhead to hospitalists than office-based doctors.

Typical Hospitalist Overhead

It is still tricky to correctly assess and allocate hospitalist overhead. This meaningfully influences the apparent total cost of the program and hence the amount of support paid by the hospital or other entity. (This support is often referred to as a “subsidy,” though I don’t care for that term because of its negative connotation.)

For example, costs for billing and collections services, malpractice insurance, temporary staffing (locums), and an overhead allocation that pays for things like the salaries of medical group administrators and clerical staff may or may not be attributed to the hospitalist budget or “cost center.” This is one of several factors that make it awfully tricky to compare the total costs and/or hospital financial support between different hospitalist groups.

SHM’s State of Hospital Medicine report includes detailed instructions regarding which expenses the survey respondents should include as overhead costs, but I think it’s safe to assume that not all responses are fully compliant. I’m confident there is a meaningful amount of “noise” in these figures. Numbers like the median financial support per FTE hospitalist per year ($156,063 in the 2014 report) should only be used as a guideline and not a precise number that might apply in your setting. My reasoning is that the collections rate and compensation amount can vary tremendously from one practice to another and will typically have a far larger influence on the amount of financial support provided by the hospital than which expenses are or aren’t included as overhead. But I am confining this discussion to the latter.

APC Costs: One Factor Driving Increased Support

SHM has been surveying the financial support per physician FTE for about 15 years, and it has shown a steady increase. It was about $60,000 per FTE annually when first surveyed in the late 1990s; it has gone up every survey since. The best explanation for this seems to an increase in hospitalist compensation while production and revenue have remained relatively flat.

There likely are many other factors in play. One important one is physician assistant and nurse practitioner costs. The survey divides the total annual support provided to the whole hospitalist practice by the total number of physician FTEs. NPs and PAs are becoming more common in hospitalist groups; 65% of groups included them in 2014, up from 54% in 2012. Yet the cost of employing them, primarily salary and benefits, appears in the numerator but not the denominator of the support per physician FTE figure.

 

This means a group that adds NP/PA staffing, which typically requires an accompanying increase in hospital financial support, while maintaining the same number of physician FTEs will show an increase in hospital support per physician FTE. But this fails to capture that the practice’s work product (i.e., patients seen) has increased as a result of increasing its clinical staff.

This is a tricky issue to fix. SHM’s Practice Analysis Committee, which manages the survey, is aware of the issue and may make future adjustments to account for it. The best method might be to convert total staffing by physicians and NP/PAs into physician-equivalent FTEs (I described one method for doing this in my August 2009 column titled “Volume Variables”) or some other method that clearly accounts for both physician and NP/PA staffing levels. Other alternatives would be to divide the annual support by the number of billed encounters or some other measure of “work output” or to report percent of the total practice revenue that comes from hospital support versus professional fee collections and other sources.

Why Allocation of NP/PA Costs and FTEs Matter

Another way to think of this issue is that including NP/PA costs but not their work (FTEs) in the financial support per FTE figure overlooks the important work they can do for a hospitalist practice. And it can lead one to conclude hospitals’ costs per clinician FTE are rising faster than is actually the case.

This is only one of the tricky issues in accurately understanding hospitalist overhead and costs to the hospital they serve. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

I visited during a hot Florida summer in the mid 1990s and could readily see that the practice was great in most respects. The large multispecialty group had recruited talented hospitalists and had put in place effective operational practices. All seemed to be going well, but inappropriate overhead allocation was undermining the success of their efforts.

The multispecialty group employing the hospitalists used the same formula to allocate overhead to the hospitalists that was in place for other specialties. And compensation was essentially each doctor’s collections minus overhead, leaving the hospitalists with annual compensation much lower than they could reasonably expect. With the group deducting from hospitalist collections the same overhead expenses charged to other specialties, including a share of outpatient buildings, staff, and supplies, the hospitalists were paying a lot for services they weren’t using. This group corrected the errors but not until some talented doctors had resigned because of the compensation formula.

This was a common mistake made by multispecialty groups that employed hospitalists years ago. Today, nearly all such groups assess an appropriately smaller portion of overhead to hospitalists than office-based doctors.

Typical Hospitalist Overhead

It is still tricky to correctly assess and allocate hospitalist overhead. This meaningfully influences the apparent total cost of the program and hence the amount of support paid by the hospital or other entity. (This support is often referred to as a “subsidy,” though I don’t care for that term because of its negative connotation.)

For example, costs for billing and collections services, malpractice insurance, temporary staffing (locums), and an overhead allocation that pays for things like the salaries of medical group administrators and clerical staff may or may not be attributed to the hospitalist budget or “cost center.” This is one of several factors that make it awfully tricky to compare the total costs and/or hospital financial support between different hospitalist groups.

SHM’s State of Hospital Medicine report includes detailed instructions regarding which expenses the survey respondents should include as overhead costs, but I think it’s safe to assume that not all responses are fully compliant. I’m confident there is a meaningful amount of “noise” in these figures. Numbers like the median financial support per FTE hospitalist per year ($156,063 in the 2014 report) should only be used as a guideline and not a precise number that might apply in your setting. My reasoning is that the collections rate and compensation amount can vary tremendously from one practice to another and will typically have a far larger influence on the amount of financial support provided by the hospital than which expenses are or aren’t included as overhead. But I am confining this discussion to the latter.

APC Costs: One Factor Driving Increased Support

SHM has been surveying the financial support per physician FTE for about 15 years, and it has shown a steady increase. It was about $60,000 per FTE annually when first surveyed in the late 1990s; it has gone up every survey since. The best explanation for this seems to an increase in hospitalist compensation while production and revenue have remained relatively flat.

There likely are many other factors in play. One important one is physician assistant and nurse practitioner costs. The survey divides the total annual support provided to the whole hospitalist practice by the total number of physician FTEs. NPs and PAs are becoming more common in hospitalist groups; 65% of groups included them in 2014, up from 54% in 2012. Yet the cost of employing them, primarily salary and benefits, appears in the numerator but not the denominator of the support per physician FTE figure.

 

This means a group that adds NP/PA staffing, which typically requires an accompanying increase in hospital financial support, while maintaining the same number of physician FTEs will show an increase in hospital support per physician FTE. But this fails to capture that the practice’s work product (i.e., patients seen) has increased as a result of increasing its clinical staff.

This is a tricky issue to fix. SHM’s Practice Analysis Committee, which manages the survey, is aware of the issue and may make future adjustments to account for it. The best method might be to convert total staffing by physicians and NP/PAs into physician-equivalent FTEs (I described one method for doing this in my August 2009 column titled “Volume Variables”) or some other method that clearly accounts for both physician and NP/PA staffing levels. Other alternatives would be to divide the annual support by the number of billed encounters or some other measure of “work output” or to report percent of the total practice revenue that comes from hospital support versus professional fee collections and other sources.

Why Allocation of NP/PA Costs and FTEs Matter

Another way to think of this issue is that including NP/PA costs but not their work (FTEs) in the financial support per FTE figure overlooks the important work they can do for a hospitalist practice. And it can lead one to conclude hospitals’ costs per clinician FTE are rising faster than is actually the case.

This is only one of the tricky issues in accurately understanding hospitalist overhead and costs to the hospital they serve. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

I think it is really cool that this publication has a series of articles on “What Cardiologists [or infection disease specialists, nephrologists, etc.] Want Hospitalists to Know.” I’m always interested to see which clinical topics made the list and which I’m already reasonably familiar with versus know little about. I’ve added this series to my list of things that are always worth the time to read, along with the “What’s New” section in UpToDate, review articles in major journals, and the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.

Not long ago, I worked with a hospitalist group that had agreed to cardiologists’ request that new hospitalists round with a cardiologist for something like three days as part of their orientation. This seems like they’ve taken the idea of “What Cardiologists Want Hospitalists to Know” a lot further than I had ever considered. I’m sure it would have value on many levels, including positioning the new hospitalist to work more effectively with the cardiologists, but I’m not sure it’s worth the cost. And I’m really concerned it sends a signal that the relationship is one way—that is, the hospitalists need to understand what the cardiologists do and want from them and not the reverse. For many reasons, I think this should be a reciprocal relationship, and it seems reasonable that new cardiologists should orient by rounding with hospitalists.

Same goes for the “… Want Hospitalists to Know” series. I’d like to see articles enumerating what hospitalists want doctors in other fields to know either in this magazine or its counterpart in the other specialty. What follows is the first of these. It is my take on non-clinical topics hospitalists want hospital leaders to know, and I’ll leave it to others to write about clinical topics.

We Aren’t on ‘Vacation’ Every Other Week

If you always think of our days off as a vacation, as in, “Those hospitalists get 26 weeks of vacation a year,” you’re making a mistake. A significant portion of our weekdays off are just like your weekends; they’re days to take a breather.

And you’re likely forgetting how many weekends we work.

And maybe lots of nights also.

You probably work more hours annually, but having more days for a breather are one offset for our weekends and nights.

Insisting Hospitalists Work an Entire Shift (12 Hours) Doesn’t Make a Lot of Sense on Slow Days

Staying around after completing clinical work yields no value. Too often, the time is spent watching YouTube or similar activities. And it means the doctor will be much more frustrated, and more likely to lobby for overtime compensation, when needing to stay beyond the scheduled end of the shift on busy days.

Avoid measuring work effort in hours. And in many cases, it is best to avoid precise determinations of when a day shift ends. At most hospitals, you do need at least one daytime doctor to stay on duty until the next shift arrives, but it rarely makes sense to have all of the hospitalists stay.

Your hospitalists need to be professional enough not to dash out the door the minute they’ve put notes on every patient’s chart. Instead, rather than leaving at the first opportunity on slow days, they could do all of the discharge preparation (med rec, discharge summary, etc.) for patients likely ready for discharge the next day; this can help a lot to discharge patients early the next day. Or they could make “secondary” rounds focused on patient satisfaction, etc.

Obs Patients Usually Are No Less Complicated—or Labor-Intensive—to Care For

 

It’s best to think of observation as solely a payor classification and not a good indicator of risk, complexity, or work required. Unfortunately “observation” is often thought of as shorthand for simple, not sick, easy to manage, etc. While true for a small subset of observation patients, such as younger people with a single problem such as atypical chest pain, it isn’t true for older (Medicare) patients with multiple chronic illnesses, on multiple medications, and with complex social situations.

Shouldn’t We Measure Length of Stay for All Patients in Hours Rather Than Days?

Then we could better understand throughput issues such as whether afternoon discharges for inpatients are late discharges or really very early discharges that weren’t held until the next morning.

Even High-Performing Hospitalist Groups Are Likely to Have Patient Satisfaction Scores on the Lower End of Doctors at Your Hospital

Don’t decide that just because they have much lower scores than the orthopedists, cardiologists, obstetricians, and other specialties, it is the hospitalists who are falling furthest below their potential. It may be the cardiologists who have a long way to go to achieve great scores for their specialty.

This isn’t an excuse. Just about every hospitalist group can do better and should work to make it happen. And because in nearly every hospital more HCAHPS surveys are attributed to hospitalists than any other specialty by a wide margin, our scores have a huge impact on the overall hospital averages. But you should keep in mind that, for a variety of reasons, hospitalists everywhere have physician communication scores that are lower than many or most other specialties.

To my knowledge, there isn’t a data set that provides patient satisfaction scores by specialty. And scores seem to vary a lot by geographic region, e.g., they’re nearly always higher in the South than other parts of the country. So there isn’t a good way to control for all the variables and know you’re setting appropriate improvement goals for each specialty. But your hospitalists will appreciate it if you acknowledge it may be unreasonable to set the same goals across specialties.

We’d Love Your Help Getting Rid of Pagers

Secure text messaging between all caregivers seems to be the way to go, and we will look to the hospital to make an investment in technology to make it possible and train users to ensure that by making messaging easier the volume of messages (interruptions) doesn’t just skyrocket. We, the hospitalists at your hospital, are happy to help with all of this, from vendor selection to plans for implementation. Please ask! TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

I think it is really cool that this publication has a series of articles on “What Cardiologists [or infection disease specialists, nephrologists, etc.] Want Hospitalists to Know.” I’m always interested to see which clinical topics made the list and which I’m already reasonably familiar with versus know little about. I’ve added this series to my list of things that are always worth the time to read, along with the “What’s New” section in UpToDate, review articles in major journals, and the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.

Not long ago, I worked with a hospitalist group that had agreed to cardiologists’ request that new hospitalists round with a cardiologist for something like three days as part of their orientation. This seems like they’ve taken the idea of “What Cardiologists Want Hospitalists to Know” a lot further than I had ever considered. I’m sure it would have value on many levels, including positioning the new hospitalist to work more effectively with the cardiologists, but I’m not sure it’s worth the cost. And I’m really concerned it sends a signal that the relationship is one way—that is, the hospitalists need to understand what the cardiologists do and want from them and not the reverse. For many reasons, I think this should be a reciprocal relationship, and it seems reasonable that new cardiologists should orient by rounding with hospitalists.

Same goes for the “… Want Hospitalists to Know” series. I’d like to see articles enumerating what hospitalists want doctors in other fields to know either in this magazine or its counterpart in the other specialty. What follows is the first of these. It is my take on non-clinical topics hospitalists want hospital leaders to know, and I’ll leave it to others to write about clinical topics.

We Aren’t on ‘Vacation’ Every Other Week

If you always think of our days off as a vacation, as in, “Those hospitalists get 26 weeks of vacation a year,” you’re making a mistake. A significant portion of our weekdays off are just like your weekends; they’re days to take a breather.

And you’re likely forgetting how many weekends we work.

And maybe lots of nights also.

You probably work more hours annually, but having more days for a breather are one offset for our weekends and nights.

Insisting Hospitalists Work an Entire Shift (12 Hours) Doesn’t Make a Lot of Sense on Slow Days

Staying around after completing clinical work yields no value. Too often, the time is spent watching YouTube or similar activities. And it means the doctor will be much more frustrated, and more likely to lobby for overtime compensation, when needing to stay beyond the scheduled end of the shift on busy days.

Avoid measuring work effort in hours. And in many cases, it is best to avoid precise determinations of when a day shift ends. At most hospitals, you do need at least one daytime doctor to stay on duty until the next shift arrives, but it rarely makes sense to have all of the hospitalists stay.

Your hospitalists need to be professional enough not to dash out the door the minute they’ve put notes on every patient’s chart. Instead, rather than leaving at the first opportunity on slow days, they could do all of the discharge preparation (med rec, discharge summary, etc.) for patients likely ready for discharge the next day; this can help a lot to discharge patients early the next day. Or they could make “secondary” rounds focused on patient satisfaction, etc.

Obs Patients Usually Are No Less Complicated—or Labor-Intensive—to Care For

 

It’s best to think of observation as solely a payor classification and not a good indicator of risk, complexity, or work required. Unfortunately “observation” is often thought of as shorthand for simple, not sick, easy to manage, etc. While true for a small subset of observation patients, such as younger people with a single problem such as atypical chest pain, it isn’t true for older (Medicare) patients with multiple chronic illnesses, on multiple medications, and with complex social situations.

Shouldn’t We Measure Length of Stay for All Patients in Hours Rather Than Days?

Then we could better understand throughput issues such as whether afternoon discharges for inpatients are late discharges or really very early discharges that weren’t held until the next morning.

Even High-Performing Hospitalist Groups Are Likely to Have Patient Satisfaction Scores on the Lower End of Doctors at Your Hospital

Don’t decide that just because they have much lower scores than the orthopedists, cardiologists, obstetricians, and other specialties, it is the hospitalists who are falling furthest below their potential. It may be the cardiologists who have a long way to go to achieve great scores for their specialty.

This isn’t an excuse. Just about every hospitalist group can do better and should work to make it happen. And because in nearly every hospital more HCAHPS surveys are attributed to hospitalists than any other specialty by a wide margin, our scores have a huge impact on the overall hospital averages. But you should keep in mind that, for a variety of reasons, hospitalists everywhere have physician communication scores that are lower than many or most other specialties.

To my knowledge, there isn’t a data set that provides patient satisfaction scores by specialty. And scores seem to vary a lot by geographic region, e.g., they’re nearly always higher in the South than other parts of the country. So there isn’t a good way to control for all the variables and know you’re setting appropriate improvement goals for each specialty. But your hospitalists will appreciate it if you acknowledge it may be unreasonable to set the same goals across specialties.

We’d Love Your Help Getting Rid of Pagers

Secure text messaging between all caregivers seems to be the way to go, and we will look to the hospital to make an investment in technology to make it possible and train users to ensure that by making messaging easier the volume of messages (interruptions) doesn’t just skyrocket. We, the hospitalists at your hospital, are happy to help with all of this, from vendor selection to plans for implementation. Please ask! TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

I think it is really cool that this publication has a series of articles on “What Cardiologists [or infection disease specialists, nephrologists, etc.] Want Hospitalists to Know.” I’m always interested to see which clinical topics made the list and which I’m already reasonably familiar with versus know little about. I’ve added this series to my list of things that are always worth the time to read, along with the “What’s New” section in UpToDate, review articles in major journals, and the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.

Not long ago, I worked with a hospitalist group that had agreed to cardiologists’ request that new hospitalists round with a cardiologist for something like three days as part of their orientation. This seems like they’ve taken the idea of “What Cardiologists Want Hospitalists to Know” a lot further than I had ever considered. I’m sure it would have value on many levels, including positioning the new hospitalist to work more effectively with the cardiologists, but I’m not sure it’s worth the cost. And I’m really concerned it sends a signal that the relationship is one way—that is, the hospitalists need to understand what the cardiologists do and want from them and not the reverse. For many reasons, I think this should be a reciprocal relationship, and it seems reasonable that new cardiologists should orient by rounding with hospitalists.

Same goes for the “… Want Hospitalists to Know” series. I’d like to see articles enumerating what hospitalists want doctors in other fields to know either in this magazine or its counterpart in the other specialty. What follows is the first of these. It is my take on non-clinical topics hospitalists want hospital leaders to know, and I’ll leave it to others to write about clinical topics.

We Aren’t on ‘Vacation’ Every Other Week

If you always think of our days off as a vacation, as in, “Those hospitalists get 26 weeks of vacation a year,” you’re making a mistake. A significant portion of our weekdays off are just like your weekends; they’re days to take a breather.

And you’re likely forgetting how many weekends we work.

And maybe lots of nights also.

You probably work more hours annually, but having more days for a breather are one offset for our weekends and nights.

Insisting Hospitalists Work an Entire Shift (12 Hours) Doesn’t Make a Lot of Sense on Slow Days

Staying around after completing clinical work yields no value. Too often, the time is spent watching YouTube or similar activities. And it means the doctor will be much more frustrated, and more likely to lobby for overtime compensation, when needing to stay beyond the scheduled end of the shift on busy days.

Avoid measuring work effort in hours. And in many cases, it is best to avoid precise determinations of when a day shift ends. At most hospitals, you do need at least one daytime doctor to stay on duty until the next shift arrives, but it rarely makes sense to have all of the hospitalists stay.

Your hospitalists need to be professional enough not to dash out the door the minute they’ve put notes on every patient’s chart. Instead, rather than leaving at the first opportunity on slow days, they could do all of the discharge preparation (med rec, discharge summary, etc.) for patients likely ready for discharge the next day; this can help a lot to discharge patients early the next day. Or they could make “secondary” rounds focused on patient satisfaction, etc.

Obs Patients Usually Are No Less Complicated—or Labor-Intensive—to Care For

 

It’s best to think of observation as solely a payor classification and not a good indicator of risk, complexity, or work required. Unfortunately “observation” is often thought of as shorthand for simple, not sick, easy to manage, etc. While true for a small subset of observation patients, such as younger people with a single problem such as atypical chest pain, it isn’t true for older (Medicare) patients with multiple chronic illnesses, on multiple medications, and with complex social situations.

Shouldn’t We Measure Length of Stay for All Patients in Hours Rather Than Days?

Then we could better understand throughput issues such as whether afternoon discharges for inpatients are late discharges or really very early discharges that weren’t held until the next morning.

Even High-Performing Hospitalist Groups Are Likely to Have Patient Satisfaction Scores on the Lower End of Doctors at Your Hospital

Don’t decide that just because they have much lower scores than the orthopedists, cardiologists, obstetricians, and other specialties, it is the hospitalists who are falling furthest below their potential. It may be the cardiologists who have a long way to go to achieve great scores for their specialty.

This isn’t an excuse. Just about every hospitalist group can do better and should work to make it happen. And because in nearly every hospital more HCAHPS surveys are attributed to hospitalists than any other specialty by a wide margin, our scores have a huge impact on the overall hospital averages. But you should keep in mind that, for a variety of reasons, hospitalists everywhere have physician communication scores that are lower than many or most other specialties.

To my knowledge, there isn’t a data set that provides patient satisfaction scores by specialty. And scores seem to vary a lot by geographic region, e.g., they’re nearly always higher in the South than other parts of the country. So there isn’t a good way to control for all the variables and know you’re setting appropriate improvement goals for each specialty. But your hospitalists will appreciate it if you acknowledge it may be unreasonable to set the same goals across specialties.

We’d Love Your Help Getting Rid of Pagers

Secure text messaging between all caregivers seems to be the way to go, and we will look to the hospital to make an investment in technology to make it possible and train users to ensure that by making messaging easier the volume of messages (interruptions) doesn’t just skyrocket. We, the hospitalists at your hospital, are happy to help with all of this, from vendor selection to plans for implementation. Please ask! TH

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Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

In the first two installments of my own list of attributes that are important underpinnings of successful hospitalist groups, I covered group culture and decision making, recruiting, the importance of a written policy and procedure manual and performance dashboard, and roles for advanced practice clinicians. I’ll continue numbering from last month and complete the list in this column.

7. Clear Reporting Relationships

Most hospitalists are employed by one entity, usually a hospital subcorporation or staffing company, yet in many respects they report to someone else, such as a hospital CMO. For many, this can feel like serving two masters.

As an example, a hospitalist is employed by St. Excellence Medical Group (SEMG), a subsidiary of St. Excellence Hospital. Yet the hospital CMO is the key person establishing hospitalist performance targets, mediating disagreements between hospitalists and cardiologists, etc. So the hospitalists and CMO might jointly make plans for changes in the hospitalist practice that have staffing or budgetary implications only to find that the SEMG president resists spending more on the hospitalist program. For some hospitalist groups, this problem of being stuck between two masters can be a real barrier to getting things done.

Because the employed physician group nearly always directs most of its attention to outpatient care, the hospitalists are sometimes an afterthought, sort of a like a neglected stepchild. And worse, I’ve worked with more than one organization in which the CMO and physician president of the employed physician group are engaged in a power struggle, with the hospitalist group (and other physician specialties) caught in the middle and suffering as a result.

I think the best way out of this dilemma is for the employed physician group to function as a management services organization, providing human resources (payroll, etc.) and revenue cycle functions to the hospitalist groups. But for nearly all other issues, such as policies and procedures, staffing, strategic planning, hiring and firing, etc., the lead hospitalist should report to the CMO.

8. Well-Organized Group Meetings

My experience is that nearly every hospitalist group has periodic meetings to discuss and make decisions on operational and clinical issues. But the effectiveness of the meetings varies a lot. In some cases, they’re little more than disorganized gripe sessions.

I think most groups should have monthly meetings scheduled for about an hour or a little longer. Attendance at most meetings should be the expectation; that means even those not working clinically that day should be expected to attend unless away on vacation or some other meaningful conflict. Simply not being on clinical service that day should not be a reason to miss the meeting. Attendance by phone periodically is usually fine, especially for those who would otherwise have a long drive to attend in person or have child care duties, etc.

An agenda should be circulated in advance of the meeting; minutes, afterward. The best minutes highlight any “to-do” items, including person responsible and target completion date. Tasks occurring over longer than a month should be tracked in the minutes of every meeting until resolved. All past meeting minutes should be readily accessible via a network computer drive for review by any member of the group at any time.

Although some of every meeting will typically need to be devoted to one-way communication from the group leader or others, ideally in every meeting meaningful time should be devoted to joint problem-solving by all in attendance to ensure all are engaged in the meetings and find them useful. Some one-way communication (e.g., regular reports of performance data) typically can be distributed via email and other means rather than devoting meeting time to review it.

 

9. Effective Compensation

The amount of compensation should be competitive with your market, but because compensation is typically seen as an entitlement, unusually high compensation amounts usually have little impact on performance. But the method of compensation can matter, that is, the portion of total dollars that are fixed, tied to production, or tied to performance.

I think it’s best if the compensation method is generally similar to the way Medicare and other payors reimburse physician services. As payors tie increasing portions of compensation to performance and bundled payments, it makes sense for these changes to be mirrored in hospitalist compensation formulas to the extent that is practical. As I’ve written in February 2014 and many other times, I think there will always be a role for a portion of compensation tied to individual productivity.

According to SHM’s 2014 State of Hospital Medicine report, 64% of hospitalist groups have some component of compensation tied to citizenship activities such as committee participation, grand rounds presentations, community talks, publications, etc. I described a citizenship bonus program in detail in my November 2011 column. And while I was once an advocate of it, I’m now ambivalent. My anecdotal experience with the group I’m part of and many others I’ve worked with makes me suspect that a bonus for good citizenship might just squash intrinsic motivation as described in Daniel Pink’s book Drive.

If you do tie some portion of compensation to citizenship, I strongly encourage not connecting it to basic expectations like meeting attendance or turning in billing data on time. These are standard parts of the job, and citizenship pay should be reserved for going beyond the basics.

10. Good Social Connections

The way things look to me, doctors across all specialties have historically enjoyed robust and rewarding social connections with one another. But with each passing year, the nature of the work, financial pressures, and even clinical vocabulary become more and more different; that is, our Venn diagrams overlap less and less.

I think doctors in different specialties are becoming less connected, and disagreements or new stresses can more easily divide us.

Although all hospitals and medical groups are working hard to implement operational and technical adjustments to keep up with changing clinical practice and reimbursement models, I see very few deliberately focused on maintaining or strengthening the social connections and feeling of occupational solidarity and shared mission across doctors and other providers (see my June 2010 column). Those that do so—to my way of thinking—will be uniquely positioned to weather the storm of rapid change much more effectively. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

In the first two installments of my own list of attributes that are important underpinnings of successful hospitalist groups, I covered group culture and decision making, recruiting, the importance of a written policy and procedure manual and performance dashboard, and roles for advanced practice clinicians. I’ll continue numbering from last month and complete the list in this column.

7. Clear Reporting Relationships

Most hospitalists are employed by one entity, usually a hospital subcorporation or staffing company, yet in many respects they report to someone else, such as a hospital CMO. For many, this can feel like serving two masters.

As an example, a hospitalist is employed by St. Excellence Medical Group (SEMG), a subsidiary of St. Excellence Hospital. Yet the hospital CMO is the key person establishing hospitalist performance targets, mediating disagreements between hospitalists and cardiologists, etc. So the hospitalists and CMO might jointly make plans for changes in the hospitalist practice that have staffing or budgetary implications only to find that the SEMG president resists spending more on the hospitalist program. For some hospitalist groups, this problem of being stuck between two masters can be a real barrier to getting things done.

Because the employed physician group nearly always directs most of its attention to outpatient care, the hospitalists are sometimes an afterthought, sort of a like a neglected stepchild. And worse, I’ve worked with more than one organization in which the CMO and physician president of the employed physician group are engaged in a power struggle, with the hospitalist group (and other physician specialties) caught in the middle and suffering as a result.

I think the best way out of this dilemma is for the employed physician group to function as a management services organization, providing human resources (payroll, etc.) and revenue cycle functions to the hospitalist groups. But for nearly all other issues, such as policies and procedures, staffing, strategic planning, hiring and firing, etc., the lead hospitalist should report to the CMO.

8. Well-Organized Group Meetings

My experience is that nearly every hospitalist group has periodic meetings to discuss and make decisions on operational and clinical issues. But the effectiveness of the meetings varies a lot. In some cases, they’re little more than disorganized gripe sessions.

I think most groups should have monthly meetings scheduled for about an hour or a little longer. Attendance at most meetings should be the expectation; that means even those not working clinically that day should be expected to attend unless away on vacation or some other meaningful conflict. Simply not being on clinical service that day should not be a reason to miss the meeting. Attendance by phone periodically is usually fine, especially for those who would otherwise have a long drive to attend in person or have child care duties, etc.

An agenda should be circulated in advance of the meeting; minutes, afterward. The best minutes highlight any “to-do” items, including person responsible and target completion date. Tasks occurring over longer than a month should be tracked in the minutes of every meeting until resolved. All past meeting minutes should be readily accessible via a network computer drive for review by any member of the group at any time.

Although some of every meeting will typically need to be devoted to one-way communication from the group leader or others, ideally in every meeting meaningful time should be devoted to joint problem-solving by all in attendance to ensure all are engaged in the meetings and find them useful. Some one-way communication (e.g., regular reports of performance data) typically can be distributed via email and other means rather than devoting meeting time to review it.

 

9. Effective Compensation

The amount of compensation should be competitive with your market, but because compensation is typically seen as an entitlement, unusually high compensation amounts usually have little impact on performance. But the method of compensation can matter, that is, the portion of total dollars that are fixed, tied to production, or tied to performance.

I think it’s best if the compensation method is generally similar to the way Medicare and other payors reimburse physician services. As payors tie increasing portions of compensation to performance and bundled payments, it makes sense for these changes to be mirrored in hospitalist compensation formulas to the extent that is practical. As I’ve written in February 2014 and many other times, I think there will always be a role for a portion of compensation tied to individual productivity.

According to SHM’s 2014 State of Hospital Medicine report, 64% of hospitalist groups have some component of compensation tied to citizenship activities such as committee participation, grand rounds presentations, community talks, publications, etc. I described a citizenship bonus program in detail in my November 2011 column. And while I was once an advocate of it, I’m now ambivalent. My anecdotal experience with the group I’m part of and many others I’ve worked with makes me suspect that a bonus for good citizenship might just squash intrinsic motivation as described in Daniel Pink’s book Drive.

If you do tie some portion of compensation to citizenship, I strongly encourage not connecting it to basic expectations like meeting attendance or turning in billing data on time. These are standard parts of the job, and citizenship pay should be reserved for going beyond the basics.

10. Good Social Connections

The way things look to me, doctors across all specialties have historically enjoyed robust and rewarding social connections with one another. But with each passing year, the nature of the work, financial pressures, and even clinical vocabulary become more and more different; that is, our Venn diagrams overlap less and less.

I think doctors in different specialties are becoming less connected, and disagreements or new stresses can more easily divide us.

Although all hospitals and medical groups are working hard to implement operational and technical adjustments to keep up with changing clinical practice and reimbursement models, I see very few deliberately focused on maintaining or strengthening the social connections and feeling of occupational solidarity and shared mission across doctors and other providers (see my June 2010 column). Those that do so—to my way of thinking—will be uniquely positioned to weather the storm of rapid change much more effectively. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

In the first two installments of my own list of attributes that are important underpinnings of successful hospitalist groups, I covered group culture and decision making, recruiting, the importance of a written policy and procedure manual and performance dashboard, and roles for advanced practice clinicians. I’ll continue numbering from last month and complete the list in this column.

7. Clear Reporting Relationships

Most hospitalists are employed by one entity, usually a hospital subcorporation or staffing company, yet in many respects they report to someone else, such as a hospital CMO. For many, this can feel like serving two masters.

As an example, a hospitalist is employed by St. Excellence Medical Group (SEMG), a subsidiary of St. Excellence Hospital. Yet the hospital CMO is the key person establishing hospitalist performance targets, mediating disagreements between hospitalists and cardiologists, etc. So the hospitalists and CMO might jointly make plans for changes in the hospitalist practice that have staffing or budgetary implications only to find that the SEMG president resists spending more on the hospitalist program. For some hospitalist groups, this problem of being stuck between two masters can be a real barrier to getting things done.

Because the employed physician group nearly always directs most of its attention to outpatient care, the hospitalists are sometimes an afterthought, sort of a like a neglected stepchild. And worse, I’ve worked with more than one organization in which the CMO and physician president of the employed physician group are engaged in a power struggle, with the hospitalist group (and other physician specialties) caught in the middle and suffering as a result.

I think the best way out of this dilemma is for the employed physician group to function as a management services organization, providing human resources (payroll, etc.) and revenue cycle functions to the hospitalist groups. But for nearly all other issues, such as policies and procedures, staffing, strategic planning, hiring and firing, etc., the lead hospitalist should report to the CMO.

8. Well-Organized Group Meetings

My experience is that nearly every hospitalist group has periodic meetings to discuss and make decisions on operational and clinical issues. But the effectiveness of the meetings varies a lot. In some cases, they’re little more than disorganized gripe sessions.

I think most groups should have monthly meetings scheduled for about an hour or a little longer. Attendance at most meetings should be the expectation; that means even those not working clinically that day should be expected to attend unless away on vacation or some other meaningful conflict. Simply not being on clinical service that day should not be a reason to miss the meeting. Attendance by phone periodically is usually fine, especially for those who would otherwise have a long drive to attend in person or have child care duties, etc.

An agenda should be circulated in advance of the meeting; minutes, afterward. The best minutes highlight any “to-do” items, including person responsible and target completion date. Tasks occurring over longer than a month should be tracked in the minutes of every meeting until resolved. All past meeting minutes should be readily accessible via a network computer drive for review by any member of the group at any time.

Although some of every meeting will typically need to be devoted to one-way communication from the group leader or others, ideally in every meeting meaningful time should be devoted to joint problem-solving by all in attendance to ensure all are engaged in the meetings and find them useful. Some one-way communication (e.g., regular reports of performance data) typically can be distributed via email and other means rather than devoting meeting time to review it.

 

9. Effective Compensation

The amount of compensation should be competitive with your market, but because compensation is typically seen as an entitlement, unusually high compensation amounts usually have little impact on performance. But the method of compensation can matter, that is, the portion of total dollars that are fixed, tied to production, or tied to performance.

I think it’s best if the compensation method is generally similar to the way Medicare and other payors reimburse physician services. As payors tie increasing portions of compensation to performance and bundled payments, it makes sense for these changes to be mirrored in hospitalist compensation formulas to the extent that is practical. As I’ve written in February 2014 and many other times, I think there will always be a role for a portion of compensation tied to individual productivity.

According to SHM’s 2014 State of Hospital Medicine report, 64% of hospitalist groups have some component of compensation tied to citizenship activities such as committee participation, grand rounds presentations, community talks, publications, etc. I described a citizenship bonus program in detail in my November 2011 column. And while I was once an advocate of it, I’m now ambivalent. My anecdotal experience with the group I’m part of and many others I’ve worked with makes me suspect that a bonus for good citizenship might just squash intrinsic motivation as described in Daniel Pink’s book Drive.

If you do tie some portion of compensation to citizenship, I strongly encourage not connecting it to basic expectations like meeting attendance or turning in billing data on time. These are standard parts of the job, and citizenship pay should be reserved for going beyond the basics.

10. Good Social Connections

The way things look to me, doctors across all specialties have historically enjoyed robust and rewarding social connections with one another. But with each passing year, the nature of the work, financial pressures, and even clinical vocabulary become more and more different; that is, our Venn diagrams overlap less and less.

I think doctors in different specialties are becoming less connected, and disagreements or new stresses can more easily divide us.

Although all hospitals and medical groups are working hard to implement operational and technical adjustments to keep up with changing clinical practice and reimbursement models, I see very few deliberately focused on maintaining or strengthening the social connections and feeling of occupational solidarity and shared mission across doctors and other providers (see my June 2010 column). Those that do so—to my way of thinking—will be uniquely positioned to weather the storm of rapid change much more effectively. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Editor’s note: Second in a three-part series.

This month continues my list of important issues that help position your hospitalist group for greatest success. SHM’s “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Hospital Medicine Group” is the definitive list, and this is my much smaller list. Last month, I discussed a culture (or mindset) of practice ownership, a formal system of group decision-making, and the importance of hospitalists themselves playing an active role in recruitment.

Policy and Procedure Manual

New protocols and decisions are being implemented every day. It is impossible to keep track of them, especially the ones that come into play infrequently. For example, many adult hospitalist groups have reached decisions about whether to admit teenagers (e.g., admit only 16 and older or 18 and older, etc.) and whether a hospitalist or obstetrician serves as attending for pregnant women admitted for a medical problem like asthma or pneumonia. But ask everyone in your group to recite the policies, and I bet the answers will differ.

My experience is that only about 20% to 25% of hospitalist groups have written these things down in one place, but all should. It doesn’t need to be fancy and could just start as a Word document in which the lead hospitalist or other designated person writes down a handful of policies and then updates them on an ongoing basis. For example, if a group meeting results in adopting a new policy, it could be added to the document as soon as the meeting adjourns. In some cases, a policy is communicated by email; it would be fine to just copy the body of that email into the manual.

This “living” document could be maintained on a shared computer drive accessible from anywhere in or out of the hospital. That way, when the solo night doctor thinks, “Do we admit 17-year-olds or not?,” she has a place to find the answer right away. And the manual will be a real asset to orient new providers to your practice.

You could start the policy and procedure manual by listing categories, including human resource issues like sick-day policy, how to request days off or scheduling changes, clinical policies like which hip fractures are admitted by hospitalists versus orthopedics, billing and coding practices such as always turn in charges at end of each day, and so on.

I’ve seen useful manuals that are about 10 pages and others that run more than 50 pages.

An Effective Performance Dashboard

Every hospitalist group should have some sort of routine performance report (dashboard) provided in the same format at regular intervals, yet in my experience many, or even most, don’t. It is worth the sometimes considerable effort to develop a meaningful dashboard, and in 2006, SHM published a helpful guide. Even though it is getting old, most of the advice is still very relevant even if the metrics we care most about have changed.

I’m a big believer in providing unblinded performance data to all in the hospitalist group. For example, a report of individual work relative value unit (wRVU) productivity would show productivity for each doctor by name. I think it is healthy to be transparent and ensure all in the group know how others are performing. There is nothing like finding out you are a performance outlier to spark an interest in understanding why and what should be done about it.

Roles for NPs and PAs

Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) can be valuable contributors to a successful hospitalist program, and according to the 2014 State of Hospital Medicine Report, 65% of hospitalist groups nationally had at least one such clinician—an increase over prior years.

 

While the idea of NP/PAs contributing to the practice is a sound one, my experience is that many groups execute the idea poorly and end up creating a role that can be both professionally unsatisfying and not serve as a platform to contribute effectively to the group. A common scenario is a hospitalist group has trouble with recruiting physicians, so it turns to NP/PAs because they are more readily available. But so often the group has thought little about the precise role NP/PAs will serve (nothing more than “they will help out the docs”). Too often the result is NP/PAs who will say many physician hospitalists simply repeat all the work on each patient, which certainly isn’t a rewarding or cost-effective role.

All should be convinced that the practice is better off in terms of increased overall productivity and/or other benefits by investing in NP/PAs than if those same dollars were instead invested in physician staffing. So one economic model to consider is to calculate the total cost (salary, benefits, malpractice, etc.) for an NP/PA and divide that by those costs for a physician. Let’s say that shows an NP/PA costs half as much as a physician (ranges 40% to 60% in my experience). That staffing cost could be considered in “physician FTE equivalents” so that, for example, a practice with four NP/PAs each costing 50% as much as a physician, or two physician equivalents, could be said to have a total of two physician-equivalent FTEs of staffing. Is the practice better off configured that way, or would it be better to have two physicians instead of the four NP/PAs? The answer will vary, but I think every practice should look at NP/PA staffing through this lens, as well as other considerations, to determine whether they’ve made the best choice.

Having NP/PAs and physicians share rounding duties can be tricky to do efficiently. In my experience, NP/PAs can be better positioned to contribute optimally and find greater professional satisfaction if responsible for a specific portion of the group’s work. For example, at a large hospital, NP/PAs might see all orthopedic consults or psych unit admissions reasonably independently, though with physician backup available. Or NP/PAs could serve as evening (“swing”) shift staffing and manage cross-cover and some admissions. In these roles, the division of labor between NP/PAs and physicians is clearer and allows NP/PAs to contribute most effectively. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Editor’s note: Second in a three-part series.

This month continues my list of important issues that help position your hospitalist group for greatest success. SHM’s “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Hospital Medicine Group” is the definitive list, and this is my much smaller list. Last month, I discussed a culture (or mindset) of practice ownership, a formal system of group decision-making, and the importance of hospitalists themselves playing an active role in recruitment.

Policy and Procedure Manual

New protocols and decisions are being implemented every day. It is impossible to keep track of them, especially the ones that come into play infrequently. For example, many adult hospitalist groups have reached decisions about whether to admit teenagers (e.g., admit only 16 and older or 18 and older, etc.) and whether a hospitalist or obstetrician serves as attending for pregnant women admitted for a medical problem like asthma or pneumonia. But ask everyone in your group to recite the policies, and I bet the answers will differ.

My experience is that only about 20% to 25% of hospitalist groups have written these things down in one place, but all should. It doesn’t need to be fancy and could just start as a Word document in which the lead hospitalist or other designated person writes down a handful of policies and then updates them on an ongoing basis. For example, if a group meeting results in adopting a new policy, it could be added to the document as soon as the meeting adjourns. In some cases, a policy is communicated by email; it would be fine to just copy the body of that email into the manual.

This “living” document could be maintained on a shared computer drive accessible from anywhere in or out of the hospital. That way, when the solo night doctor thinks, “Do we admit 17-year-olds or not?,” she has a place to find the answer right away. And the manual will be a real asset to orient new providers to your practice.

You could start the policy and procedure manual by listing categories, including human resource issues like sick-day policy, how to request days off or scheduling changes, clinical policies like which hip fractures are admitted by hospitalists versus orthopedics, billing and coding practices such as always turn in charges at end of each day, and so on.

I’ve seen useful manuals that are about 10 pages and others that run more than 50 pages.

An Effective Performance Dashboard

Every hospitalist group should have some sort of routine performance report (dashboard) provided in the same format at regular intervals, yet in my experience many, or even most, don’t. It is worth the sometimes considerable effort to develop a meaningful dashboard, and in 2006, SHM published a helpful guide. Even though it is getting old, most of the advice is still very relevant even if the metrics we care most about have changed.

I’m a big believer in providing unblinded performance data to all in the hospitalist group. For example, a report of individual work relative value unit (wRVU) productivity would show productivity for each doctor by name. I think it is healthy to be transparent and ensure all in the group know how others are performing. There is nothing like finding out you are a performance outlier to spark an interest in understanding why and what should be done about it.

Roles for NPs and PAs

Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) can be valuable contributors to a successful hospitalist program, and according to the 2014 State of Hospital Medicine Report, 65% of hospitalist groups nationally had at least one such clinician—an increase over prior years.

 

While the idea of NP/PAs contributing to the practice is a sound one, my experience is that many groups execute the idea poorly and end up creating a role that can be both professionally unsatisfying and not serve as a platform to contribute effectively to the group. A common scenario is a hospitalist group has trouble with recruiting physicians, so it turns to NP/PAs because they are more readily available. But so often the group has thought little about the precise role NP/PAs will serve (nothing more than “they will help out the docs”). Too often the result is NP/PAs who will say many physician hospitalists simply repeat all the work on each patient, which certainly isn’t a rewarding or cost-effective role.

All should be convinced that the practice is better off in terms of increased overall productivity and/or other benefits by investing in NP/PAs than if those same dollars were instead invested in physician staffing. So one economic model to consider is to calculate the total cost (salary, benefits, malpractice, etc.) for an NP/PA and divide that by those costs for a physician. Let’s say that shows an NP/PA costs half as much as a physician (ranges 40% to 60% in my experience). That staffing cost could be considered in “physician FTE equivalents” so that, for example, a practice with four NP/PAs each costing 50% as much as a physician, or two physician equivalents, could be said to have a total of two physician-equivalent FTEs of staffing. Is the practice better off configured that way, or would it be better to have two physicians instead of the four NP/PAs? The answer will vary, but I think every practice should look at NP/PA staffing through this lens, as well as other considerations, to determine whether they’ve made the best choice.

Having NP/PAs and physicians share rounding duties can be tricky to do efficiently. In my experience, NP/PAs can be better positioned to contribute optimally and find greater professional satisfaction if responsible for a specific portion of the group’s work. For example, at a large hospital, NP/PAs might see all orthopedic consults or psych unit admissions reasonably independently, though with physician backup available. Or NP/PAs could serve as evening (“swing”) shift staffing and manage cross-cover and some admissions. In these roles, the division of labor between NP/PAs and physicians is clearer and allows NP/PAs to contribute most effectively. TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Editor’s note: Second in a three-part series.

This month continues my list of important issues that help position your hospitalist group for greatest success. SHM’s “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Hospital Medicine Group” is the definitive list, and this is my much smaller list. Last month, I discussed a culture (or mindset) of practice ownership, a formal system of group decision-making, and the importance of hospitalists themselves playing an active role in recruitment.

Policy and Procedure Manual

New protocols and decisions are being implemented every day. It is impossible to keep track of them, especially the ones that come into play infrequently. For example, many adult hospitalist groups have reached decisions about whether to admit teenagers (e.g., admit only 16 and older or 18 and older, etc.) and whether a hospitalist or obstetrician serves as attending for pregnant women admitted for a medical problem like asthma or pneumonia. But ask everyone in your group to recite the policies, and I bet the answers will differ.

My experience is that only about 20% to 25% of hospitalist groups have written these things down in one place, but all should. It doesn’t need to be fancy and could just start as a Word document in which the lead hospitalist or other designated person writes down a handful of policies and then updates them on an ongoing basis. For example, if a group meeting results in adopting a new policy, it could be added to the document as soon as the meeting adjourns. In some cases, a policy is communicated by email; it would be fine to just copy the body of that email into the manual.

This “living” document could be maintained on a shared computer drive accessible from anywhere in or out of the hospital. That way, when the solo night doctor thinks, “Do we admit 17-year-olds or not?,” she has a place to find the answer right away. And the manual will be a real asset to orient new providers to your practice.

You could start the policy and procedure manual by listing categories, including human resource issues like sick-day policy, how to request days off or scheduling changes, clinical policies like which hip fractures are admitted by hospitalists versus orthopedics, billing and coding practices such as always turn in charges at end of each day, and so on.

I’ve seen useful manuals that are about 10 pages and others that run more than 50 pages.

An Effective Performance Dashboard

Every hospitalist group should have some sort of routine performance report (dashboard) provided in the same format at regular intervals, yet in my experience many, or even most, don’t. It is worth the sometimes considerable effort to develop a meaningful dashboard, and in 2006, SHM published a helpful guide. Even though it is getting old, most of the advice is still very relevant even if the metrics we care most about have changed.

I’m a big believer in providing unblinded performance data to all in the hospitalist group. For example, a report of individual work relative value unit (wRVU) productivity would show productivity for each doctor by name. I think it is healthy to be transparent and ensure all in the group know how others are performing. There is nothing like finding out you are a performance outlier to spark an interest in understanding why and what should be done about it.

Roles for NPs and PAs

Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) can be valuable contributors to a successful hospitalist program, and according to the 2014 State of Hospital Medicine Report, 65% of hospitalist groups nationally had at least one such clinician—an increase over prior years.

 

While the idea of NP/PAs contributing to the practice is a sound one, my experience is that many groups execute the idea poorly and end up creating a role that can be both professionally unsatisfying and not serve as a platform to contribute effectively to the group. A common scenario is a hospitalist group has trouble with recruiting physicians, so it turns to NP/PAs because they are more readily available. But so often the group has thought little about the precise role NP/PAs will serve (nothing more than “they will help out the docs”). Too often the result is NP/PAs who will say many physician hospitalists simply repeat all the work on each patient, which certainly isn’t a rewarding or cost-effective role.

All should be convinced that the practice is better off in terms of increased overall productivity and/or other benefits by investing in NP/PAs than if those same dollars were instead invested in physician staffing. So one economic model to consider is to calculate the total cost (salary, benefits, malpractice, etc.) for an NP/PA and divide that by those costs for a physician. Let’s say that shows an NP/PA costs half as much as a physician (ranges 40% to 60% in my experience). That staffing cost could be considered in “physician FTE equivalents” so that, for example, a practice with four NP/PAs each costing 50% as much as a physician, or two physician equivalents, could be said to have a total of two physician-equivalent FTEs of staffing. Is the practice better off configured that way, or would it be better to have two physicians instead of the four NP/PAs? The answer will vary, but I think every practice should look at NP/PA staffing through this lens, as well as other considerations, to determine whether they’ve made the best choice.

Having NP/PAs and physicians share rounding duties can be tricky to do efficiently. In my experience, NP/PAs can be better positioned to contribute optimally and find greater professional satisfaction if responsible for a specific portion of the group’s work. For example, at a large hospital, NP/PAs might see all orthopedic consults or psych unit admissions reasonably independently, though with physician backup available. Or NP/PAs could serve as evening (“swing”) shift staffing and manage cross-cover and some admissions. In these roles, the division of labor between NP/PAs and physicians is clearer and allows NP/PAs to contribute most effectively. TH

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Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Early in 2015, SHM published the updated edition of the “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Hospital Medicine Group,” which is a free download via the SHM website. Every hospitalist group should use this comprehensive list of attributes as one important frame of reference to guide ongoing improvement efforts and long-range planning.

In this column and the next two, I’ll split the difference between the very brief list of top success factors for hospitalist groups I wrote about in my March 2011 column and the very comprehensive “Key Characteristics” document. I think these attributes are among the most important to support a high-performing group, yet they are sometimes overlooked or implemented poorly. They are of roughly equal importance and are listed in no particular order.

Deliberately Cultivating a Culture (or Mindset) of Practice Ownership

It’s easy for hospitalists to think of themselves as employees who just work shifts but have no need or opportunity to attend to the bigger picture of the practice or the hospital in which they operate. After all, being a good doctor for your patients is an awfully big job itself, and lots of recruitment ads tell you doctoring is all that will be expected of you. Someone else will handle everything necessary to ensure your practice is successful.

This line of thinking will limit the success of your group.

Your group will perform much better and you’re likely to find your career much more rewarding if you and your hospitalist colleagues think of yourselves as owning your practice and take an active role in managing it. You’ll still need others to manage day-to-day business affairs, but at least a portion of the hospitalists in the group should be actively involved in planning and making decisions about the group’s operations and future evolution.

I encounter hospitalist groups that have become convinced they don’t even have the opportunity to shape or influence their practice. “No one ever listens,” they say. “The hospital executives just do what they want regardless of what we say.” But in nearly every case, that is an exaggeration. Most administrative leaders desperately want hospitalist engagement and thoughtful participation in planning and decision making.

I wrote additional thoughts about the importance of a culture, or mindset, of practice ownership in August 2008. The print version of that column included a short list of questions you could ask yourself to assess whether your own group has such a culture, but it is missing from the web version and can be found at nelsonflores.com/html/quiz.html.

A Formal System of Group ‘Governance’

So many hospitalist groups rely almost entirely on consensus to make decisions. This might work well enough for a very small group (e.g., four or five doctors), but for large groups, it means just one or two dissenters can block a decision and nothing much gets done.

Disagreements about practice operations and future direction are common, so every group should commit to writing some method of how votes will be taken in the absence of consensus. For example, the group might be divided about whether to adopt unit-based assignments or change the hours of an evening (“swing”) shift, and a formal vote might be the only way to make a decision. It’s best if you have decided in advance issues such as what constitutes a quorum, who is eligible to vote, and whether the winning vote requires a simple or super-majority. And a formalized system of voting helps support a culture ownership.

I wrote about this originally in December 2007 and provided sample bylaws your group could modify as needed. Of course, you should keep in mind that if you are indeed employed by a larger entity such as a hospital or staffing company, you don’t have the ability to make all decisions by a vote of the group. Pay raises, staff additions, and similar decisions require support of the employer, and while a vote in support of them might influence what actually happens, it still requires the support of the employer. But there are lots of things, like the work schedule, system of allocating patients across providers, etc., that are usually best made by the group itself, and sometimes they might come down to a vote of the group.

 

Never Stop Recruiting and Ensure Hospitalists Themselves Are Actively Engaged in Recruiting

I wrote about recruiting originally in July 2008 when there was a shortage of hospitalists everywhere. Since then, the supply of doctors seeking work as a hospitalist has caught up with demand in many major metropolitan areas like Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.

But outside of large markets—that is, in most of the country—demand for hospitalists still far exceeds supply, and groups face ongoing staffing deficits that come with the need for existing doctors to work extra shifts and use locum tenens or other forms of temporary staffing. The potential excess supply of hospitalists in major markets may eventually trickle out and ease the shortages elsewhere, but that hasn’t happened in a big way yet. So for these places, it is crucial to devote a lot of energy and resources to recruiting.

A vital component of successful recruiting is participation in the effort by the hospitalists themselves. I think the best mindset for the hospitalists is to think of themselves as leading recruitment efforts assisted by recruiters rather than the other way around. For example, the lead hospitalist or some other designated doctor should try to respond by phone (if that’s impractical, then respond by email) to every reasonable inquiry from a new candidate within 24 hours and serve as the candidate’s principle point of communication throughout the recruitment process. The recruiter can handle details of things like arranging travel for an interview, but a hospitalist in the group should be the main source of information regarding things like the work schedule, patient volume, compensation, etc. And a hospitalist should serve as the main host during a candidate’s on-site interview.

More to Come …

Next month, I’ll address things like a written policy and procedure manual, clear reporting relationships for the hospitalist group, and roles for advanced practice clinicians (NPs and PAs). TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Early in 2015, SHM published the updated edition of the “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Hospital Medicine Group,” which is a free download via the SHM website. Every hospitalist group should use this comprehensive list of attributes as one important frame of reference to guide ongoing improvement efforts and long-range planning.

In this column and the next two, I’ll split the difference between the very brief list of top success factors for hospitalist groups I wrote about in my March 2011 column and the very comprehensive “Key Characteristics” document. I think these attributes are among the most important to support a high-performing group, yet they are sometimes overlooked or implemented poorly. They are of roughly equal importance and are listed in no particular order.

Deliberately Cultivating a Culture (or Mindset) of Practice Ownership

It’s easy for hospitalists to think of themselves as employees who just work shifts but have no need or opportunity to attend to the bigger picture of the practice or the hospital in which they operate. After all, being a good doctor for your patients is an awfully big job itself, and lots of recruitment ads tell you doctoring is all that will be expected of you. Someone else will handle everything necessary to ensure your practice is successful.

This line of thinking will limit the success of your group.

Your group will perform much better and you’re likely to find your career much more rewarding if you and your hospitalist colleagues think of yourselves as owning your practice and take an active role in managing it. You’ll still need others to manage day-to-day business affairs, but at least a portion of the hospitalists in the group should be actively involved in planning and making decisions about the group’s operations and future evolution.

I encounter hospitalist groups that have become convinced they don’t even have the opportunity to shape or influence their practice. “No one ever listens,” they say. “The hospital executives just do what they want regardless of what we say.” But in nearly every case, that is an exaggeration. Most administrative leaders desperately want hospitalist engagement and thoughtful participation in planning and decision making.

I wrote additional thoughts about the importance of a culture, or mindset, of practice ownership in August 2008. The print version of that column included a short list of questions you could ask yourself to assess whether your own group has such a culture, but it is missing from the web version and can be found at nelsonflores.com/html/quiz.html.

A Formal System of Group ‘Governance’

So many hospitalist groups rely almost entirely on consensus to make decisions. This might work well enough for a very small group (e.g., four or five doctors), but for large groups, it means just one or two dissenters can block a decision and nothing much gets done.

Disagreements about practice operations and future direction are common, so every group should commit to writing some method of how votes will be taken in the absence of consensus. For example, the group might be divided about whether to adopt unit-based assignments or change the hours of an evening (“swing”) shift, and a formal vote might be the only way to make a decision. It’s best if you have decided in advance issues such as what constitutes a quorum, who is eligible to vote, and whether the winning vote requires a simple or super-majority. And a formalized system of voting helps support a culture ownership.

I wrote about this originally in December 2007 and provided sample bylaws your group could modify as needed. Of course, you should keep in mind that if you are indeed employed by a larger entity such as a hospital or staffing company, you don’t have the ability to make all decisions by a vote of the group. Pay raises, staff additions, and similar decisions require support of the employer, and while a vote in support of them might influence what actually happens, it still requires the support of the employer. But there are lots of things, like the work schedule, system of allocating patients across providers, etc., that are usually best made by the group itself, and sometimes they might come down to a vote of the group.

 

Never Stop Recruiting and Ensure Hospitalists Themselves Are Actively Engaged in Recruiting

I wrote about recruiting originally in July 2008 when there was a shortage of hospitalists everywhere. Since then, the supply of doctors seeking work as a hospitalist has caught up with demand in many major metropolitan areas like Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.

But outside of large markets—that is, in most of the country—demand for hospitalists still far exceeds supply, and groups face ongoing staffing deficits that come with the need for existing doctors to work extra shifts and use locum tenens or other forms of temporary staffing. The potential excess supply of hospitalists in major markets may eventually trickle out and ease the shortages elsewhere, but that hasn’t happened in a big way yet. So for these places, it is crucial to devote a lot of energy and resources to recruiting.

A vital component of successful recruiting is participation in the effort by the hospitalists themselves. I think the best mindset for the hospitalists is to think of themselves as leading recruitment efforts assisted by recruiters rather than the other way around. For example, the lead hospitalist or some other designated doctor should try to respond by phone (if that’s impractical, then respond by email) to every reasonable inquiry from a new candidate within 24 hours and serve as the candidate’s principle point of communication throughout the recruitment process. The recruiter can handle details of things like arranging travel for an interview, but a hospitalist in the group should be the main source of information regarding things like the work schedule, patient volume, compensation, etc. And a hospitalist should serve as the main host during a candidate’s on-site interview.

More to Come …

Next month, I’ll address things like a written policy and procedure manual, clear reporting relationships for the hospitalist group, and roles for advanced practice clinicians (NPs and PAs). TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].

Early in 2015, SHM published the updated edition of the “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Hospital Medicine Group,” which is a free download via the SHM website. Every hospitalist group should use this comprehensive list of attributes as one important frame of reference to guide ongoing improvement efforts and long-range planning.

In this column and the next two, I’ll split the difference between the very brief list of top success factors for hospitalist groups I wrote about in my March 2011 column and the very comprehensive “Key Characteristics” document. I think these attributes are among the most important to support a high-performing group, yet they are sometimes overlooked or implemented poorly. They are of roughly equal importance and are listed in no particular order.

Deliberately Cultivating a Culture (or Mindset) of Practice Ownership

It’s easy for hospitalists to think of themselves as employees who just work shifts but have no need or opportunity to attend to the bigger picture of the practice or the hospital in which they operate. After all, being a good doctor for your patients is an awfully big job itself, and lots of recruitment ads tell you doctoring is all that will be expected of you. Someone else will handle everything necessary to ensure your practice is successful.

This line of thinking will limit the success of your group.

Your group will perform much better and you’re likely to find your career much more rewarding if you and your hospitalist colleagues think of yourselves as owning your practice and take an active role in managing it. You’ll still need others to manage day-to-day business affairs, but at least a portion of the hospitalists in the group should be actively involved in planning and making decisions about the group’s operations and future evolution.

I encounter hospitalist groups that have become convinced they don’t even have the opportunity to shape or influence their practice. “No one ever listens,” they say. “The hospital executives just do what they want regardless of what we say.” But in nearly every case, that is an exaggeration. Most administrative leaders desperately want hospitalist engagement and thoughtful participation in planning and decision making.

I wrote additional thoughts about the importance of a culture, or mindset, of practice ownership in August 2008. The print version of that column included a short list of questions you could ask yourself to assess whether your own group has such a culture, but it is missing from the web version and can be found at nelsonflores.com/html/quiz.html.

A Formal System of Group ‘Governance’

So many hospitalist groups rely almost entirely on consensus to make decisions. This might work well enough for a very small group (e.g., four or five doctors), but for large groups, it means just one or two dissenters can block a decision and nothing much gets done.

Disagreements about practice operations and future direction are common, so every group should commit to writing some method of how votes will be taken in the absence of consensus. For example, the group might be divided about whether to adopt unit-based assignments or change the hours of an evening (“swing”) shift, and a formal vote might be the only way to make a decision. It’s best if you have decided in advance issues such as what constitutes a quorum, who is eligible to vote, and whether the winning vote requires a simple or super-majority. And a formalized system of voting helps support a culture ownership.

I wrote about this originally in December 2007 and provided sample bylaws your group could modify as needed. Of course, you should keep in mind that if you are indeed employed by a larger entity such as a hospital or staffing company, you don’t have the ability to make all decisions by a vote of the group. Pay raises, staff additions, and similar decisions require support of the employer, and while a vote in support of them might influence what actually happens, it still requires the support of the employer. But there are lots of things, like the work schedule, system of allocating patients across providers, etc., that are usually best made by the group itself, and sometimes they might come down to a vote of the group.

 

Never Stop Recruiting and Ensure Hospitalists Themselves Are Actively Engaged in Recruiting

I wrote about recruiting originally in July 2008 when there was a shortage of hospitalists everywhere. Since then, the supply of doctors seeking work as a hospitalist has caught up with demand in many major metropolitan areas like Minneapolis and Washington, D.C.

But outside of large markets—that is, in most of the country—demand for hospitalists still far exceeds supply, and groups face ongoing staffing deficits that come with the need for existing doctors to work extra shifts and use locum tenens or other forms of temporary staffing. The potential excess supply of hospitalists in major markets may eventually trickle out and ease the shortages elsewhere, but that hasn’t happened in a big way yet. So for these places, it is crucial to devote a lot of energy and resources to recruiting.

A vital component of successful recruiting is participation in the effort by the hospitalists themselves. I think the best mindset for the hospitalists is to think of themselves as leading recruitment efforts assisted by recruiters rather than the other way around. For example, the lead hospitalist or some other designated doctor should try to respond by phone (if that’s impractical, then respond by email) to every reasonable inquiry from a new candidate within 24 hours and serve as the candidate’s principle point of communication throughout the recruitment process. The recruiter can handle details of things like arranging travel for an interview, but a hospitalist in the group should be the main source of information regarding things like the work schedule, patient volume, compensation, etc. And a hospitalist should serve as the main host during a candidate’s on-site interview.

More to Come …

Next month, I’ll address things like a written policy and procedure manual, clear reporting relationships for the hospitalist group, and roles for advanced practice clinicians (NPs and PAs). TH

---

Dr. Nelson has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is co-founder and past president of SHM, and principal in Nelson Flores Hospital Medicine Consultants. He is co-director for SHM’s “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” course. Write to him at [email protected].