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Characterizing Hospitalist Practice and Perceptions of Critical Care Delivery
Despite calls for board-certified intensivist physicians to lead critical care delivery,1-3 the intensivist shortage in the United States continues to worsen,4 with projected shortfalls of 22% by 2020 and 35% by 2030.5 Many hospitals currently have inadequate or no board-certified intensivist support.6 The intensivist shortage has necessitated the development of alternative intensive care unit (ICU) staffing models, including engagement in telemedicine,7 the utilization of advanced practice providers,8 and dependence on hospitalists9 to deliver critical care services to ICU patients. Presently, research does not clearly show consistent differences in clinical outcomes based on the training of the clinical provider, although optimized teamwork and team rounds in the ICU do seem to be associated with improved outcomes.10-12
In its 2016 annual survey of hospital medicine (HM) leaders, the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) documented that most HM groups care for ICU patients, with up to 80% of hospitalist groups in some regions delivering critical care.13 In many United States hospitals, hospitalists serve as the primary if not lone physician providers of critical care.6,14 HM, with its team-based approach and on-site presence, shares many of the key attributes and values that define high-functioning critical care teams, and many hospitalists likely capably deliver some critical care services.9 However, hospitalists are also a highly heterogeneous work force with varied exposure to and comfort with critical care medicine, making it difficult to generalize hospitalists’ scope of practice in the ICU.
Because hospitalists render a significant amount of critical care in the United States, we surveyed practicing hospitalists to understand their demographics and practice roles in the ICU setting and to ascertain how they are supported when doing so. Additionally, we sought to identify mismatches between the ICU services that hospitalists provide and what they feel prepared and supported to deliver. Finally, we attempted to elucidate how hospitalists who practice in the ICU might respond to novel educational offerings targeted to mitigate cognitive or procedural gaps.
METHODS
We developed and deployed a survey to address the aforementioned questions. The survey content was developed iteratively by the Critical Care Task Force of SHM’s Education Committee and subsequently approved by SHM’s Education Committee and Board of Directors. Members of the Critical Care Task Force include critical care physicians and hospitalists. The survey included 25 items (supplemental Appendix A). Seventeen questions addressed the demographics and practice roles of hospitalists in the ICU, 5 addressed cognitive and procedural practice gaps, and 3 addressed how hospitalists would respond to educational opportunities in critical care. We used conditional formatting to ensure that only respondents who deliver ICU care could answer questions related to ICU practice. The survey was delivered by using an online survey platform (Survey Monkey, San Mateo, CA).
The survey was deployed in 3 phases from March to October of 2016. Initially, we distributed a pilot survey to professional contacts of the Critical Care Task Force to solicit feedback and refine the survey’s format and content. These contacts were largely academic hospitalists from our local institutions. We then distributed the survey to hospitalists via professional networks with instructions to forward the link to interested hospitalists. Finally, we distributed the survey to approximately 4000 hospitalists randomly selected from SHM’s national listserv of approximately 12,000 hospitalists. Respondents could enter a drawing for a monetary prize upon completion of the survey.
None of the survey questions changed during the 3 phases of survey deployment, and the data reported herein were compiled from all 3 phases of the survey deployment. Frequency tables were created using Tableau (version 10.0; Tableau Software, Seattle, WA). Comparisons between categorical questions were made by using χ2 and Fischer exact tests to calculate P values for associations by using SAS (version 9.3; SAS Institute, Cary, NC). Associations with P values below .05 were considered statistically significant.
RESULTS
Objective 1: Demographics and Practice Role
Four hundred and twenty-five hospitalists responded to the survey. The first 2 phases (pilot survey and distribution via professional networks) generated 101 responses, and the third phase (via SHM’s listserv) generated an additional 324 responses. As the survey was anonymous, we could not determine which hospitals or geographic regions were represented. Three hundred and twenty-five of the 425 hospitalists who completed the survey (77%) reported that they delivered care in the ICU. Of these 325 hospitalists, 45 served only as consultants, while the remaining 280 (66% of the total sample) served as the primary attending physician in the ICU. Among these primary providers of care in the ICU, 60 (21%) practiced in rural settings and 220 (79%) practiced in nonrural settings (Figure 1).
The demographics of our respondents were similar to those of the SHM annual survey,13 in which 66% of respondents delivered ICU care. Forty-one percent of our respondents worked in critical access or small community hospitals, 24% in academic medical centers, and 34% in large community centers with an academic affiliation. The SHM annual survey cohort included more physicians from nonteaching hospitals (58.7%) and fewer from academic medical centers (14.8%).13
Hospitalists’ presence in the ICU varied by practice setting (Table 1). 
Hospitalists were significantly more prevalent in rural ICUs than in nonrural settings (96% vs 73%; Table 2). 
We found similar results when comparing academic hospitalists (those working in an academic medical center or academic-affiliated hospital) with nonacademic hospitalists (those working in critical access or small community centers). Specifically, hospitalists in nonacademic settings were significantly more prevalent in ICUs (90% vs 67%; Table 2), more likely to serve as the primary attending (81% vs 55%), and more likely to deliver all critical care services (64% vs 25%). Sixty-four percent of respondents from nonacademic settings reported that hospitalists manage all or most ICU patients in their hospital as opposed to 25% for academic respondents (χ2P value for association <.001). Intensivist availability was also significantly lower in nonacademic ICUs (Table 2).
We also sought to determine whether the ability to transfer critically ill patients to higher levels of care effectively mitigated shortfalls in intensivist staffing. When restricted to hospitalists who served as primary providers for ICU patients, 28% of all respondents and 51% of rural hospitalists reported transferring patients to a higher level of care.
Sixty-seven percent of hospitalists who served as primary physicians for ICU patients in any setting reported at least moderate difficulty arranging transfers to higher levels of care.
Objective 2: Identifying the Practice Gap
Hospitalists’ perceptions of practicing critical care beyond their skill level and without sufficient board-certified intensivist support varied by both practice location and practice type (Table 3). 
There were similar discrepancies between academic and nonacademic respondents. Forty-two percent of respondents practicing in nonacademic settings reported being expected to practice beyond their scope at least some of the time, and 18% reported that intensivist support was never sufficient. This contrasts with academic hospitalists, of whom 35% reported feeling expected to practice outside their scope, and less than 4% reported the available support from intensivists was never sufficient. For comparisons of academic and nonacademic respondents, only perceptions of sufficient board-certified intensivist support reached statistical significance (Table 3).
The role of intensivists in making management decisions and the strategy for ventilator management decisions correlated significantly with perception of intensivist support (P < .001) but not with the perception of practicing beyond one’s scope. The number of ventilated patients did not correlate significantly with either perception of intensivist support or of being expected to practice beyond scope.
Difficulty transferring patients to a higher level of care was the only attribute that significantly correlated with hospitalists’ perceptions of having to practice beyond their skill level (P < .05; Table 3). Difficulty of transfer was also significantly associated with perceived adequacy of board-certified intensivist support (P < .001). Total hours of intensivist coverage, intensivist role in decision making, and ventilator management arrangements also correlated significantly with the perceived adequacy of board-certified intensivist support (P < .001 for all; Table 3).
Objective 3: Assessing Interest in Critical Care Education
More than 85% of respondents indicated interest in obtaining additional critical care training and some form of certification short of fellowship training. Preferred modes of content delivery included courses or precourses at national meetings, academies, or online modules. Hospitalists in smaller communities indicated preference for online resources.
DISCUSSION
This survey of a large national cohort of hospitalists from diverse practice settings validates previous studies suggesting that hospitalists deliver critical care services, most notably in community and rural hospitals.13 A substantial subset of our respondents represented rural practice settings, which allowed us to compare rural and nonrural hospitalists as well as those practicing in academic and nonacademic settings. In assessing both the objective services that hospitalists provided as well as their subjective perceptions of how they practiced, we could correlate factors associated with the sense of practicing beyond one’s skill or feeling inadequately supported by board-certified intensivists.
More than a third of responding hospitalists who practiced in the ICU reported that they practiced beyond their self-perceived skill level, and almost three-fourths indicated that they practiced without consistent or adequate board-certified intensivist support. Rural and nonacademic hospitalists were far more likely to report delivering critical care beyond their comfort level and having insufficient board-certified intensivist support.
Calls for board-certified intensivists to deliver critical care to all critically ill patients do not reflect the reality in many American hospitals and, either by intent or by default, hospitalists have become the major and often sole providers of critical care services in many hospitals without robust intensivist support. We suspect that this phenomenon has been consistently underreported in the literature because academic hospitalists generally do not practice critical care.15
Many potential solutions to the intensivist shortage have been explored. Prior efforts in the United States have focused largely on care standardization and the recruitment of more trainees into existing critical care training pathways.16 Other countries have created multidisciplinary critical care training pathways that delink critical care from specific subspecialty training programs.17 Another potential solution to ensure that critically ill patients receive care from board-certified intensivists is to regionalize critical care such that the sickest patients are consistently transferred to referral centers with robust intensivist staffing.1,18 While such an approach has been effectively implemented for trauma patients7, it has yet to materialize on a systemic basis for other critically ill cohorts. Moreover, our data suggest that hospitalists who attempt to transfer patients to higher levels of critical care find doing so burdensome and difficult.
Our surveyed hospitalists overwhelmingly expressed interest in augmenting their critical care skills and knowledge. However, most existing critical care educational offerings are not optimized for hospitalists, either focusing on very specific skills or knowledge (eg, procedural techniques or point-of-care ultrasound) or providing entry-level or very foundational education. None of these offerings provide comprehensive, structured training schemas for hospitalists who need to evolve beyond basic critical care skills to manage critically ill patients competently and consistently for extended periods of time.
Our study has several limitations. First, we estimate that about 10% of invited participants responded to this survey, but as respondents could forward the survey via professional networks, this is only an estimate. It is possible but unlikely that some respondents could have completed the survey more than once. Second, because our analysis identified only associations, we cannot infer causality for any of our findings. Third, the questionnaire was not designed to capture the acuity threshold at which point each respondent would prefer to transfer their patients into an ICU setting or to another institution for assistance in critical care management. We recognize that definitions and perceptions of patient acuity vary markedly from one hospital to the next, and a patient who can be comfortably managed in a floor setting in one hospital may require ICU care in a smaller or less well-resourced hospital. Practice patterns relating to acuity thresholds could have a substantial impact both on critical care patient volumes and on provider perceptions and, as such, warrant further study.
Finally, as respondents participated voluntarily, our sample may have overrepresented hospitalists who practice or are interested in critical care, thereby overestimating the scope of the problem and hospitalists’ interest in nonfellowship critical care training and certification. However, this seems unlikely given that, relative to SHM’s annual survey, we overrepresented hospitalists from academic and large community medical centers who generally provide less critical care than other hospitalists.13 Provided that roughly 85% of the estimated 50,000 American hospitalists practice outside of academic medical centers,13 perhaps as many as 37,000 hospitalists regularly deliver care to critically ill patients in ICUs. In light of the evolving intensivist shortage,4,5 this number seems likely to continue to grow. Whatever biases may exist in our sample, it is evident that a substantial number of ICU patients are managed by hospitalists who feel unprepared and undersupported to perform the task.
Without a massive and sustained increase in the number of board-certified intensivists or a systemic national plan to regionalize critical care delivery, hospitalists will continue to practice critical care, frequently with inadequate knowledge, skills, or intensivist support. Fortunately, these same hospitalists appear to be highly interested in augmenting their skills to care for their critically ill patients. The HM and critical care communities must rise to this challenge and help these providers deliver safe, appropriate, and high-quality care to their critically ill patients.
Disclosure
Mark V. Williams, MD, FACP, MHM, receives funding from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Society of Hospital Medicine honoraria.
Society of Hospital Medicine Resources
1. Barnato AE, Kahn JM, Rubenfeld GD, et al. Prioritizing the organization and management of intensive care services in the United States: the PrOMIS Conference. Crit Care Med. 2007;35(4):1003-1011. PubMed
2. The Leapfrog Group. Factsheet: ICU Physician Staffing. Leapfrog Hospital Survey. Washington, DC: The Leapfrog Group; 2016.
3. Baumann MH, Simpson SQ, Stahl M, Raoof S, Marciniuk DD, Gutterman DD. First, do no harm: less training not equal quality care. Am J Crit Care. Jul 2012;21(4):227-230. PubMed
4. Krell K. Critical care workforce. Crit Care Med. 2008;36(4):1350-1353. PubMed
5. Angus DC, Kelley MA, Schmitz RJ, White A, Popovich J, Jr. Caring for the critically ill patient. Current and projected workforce requirements for care of the critically ill and patients with pulmonary disease: can we meet the requirements of an aging population? JAMA. 2000;284(21):2762-2770. PubMed
6. Hyzy RC, Flanders SA, Pronovost PJ, et al. Characteristics of intensive care units in Michigan: not an open and closed case. J Hosp Med. 2010;5(1):4-9. PubMed
7. Kahn JM, Cicero BD, Wallace DJ, Iwashyna TJ. Adoption of ICU telemedicine in the United States. Crit Care Med. 2014;42(2):362-368. PubMed
8. Kleinpell RM, Ely EW, Grabenkort R. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants in the intensive care unit: an evidence-based review. Crit Care Med. 2008;36(10):2888-2897. PubMed
9. Heisler M. Hospitalists and intensivists: partners in caring for the critically ill--the time has come. J Hosp Med. 2010;5(1):1-3. PubMed
10. Checkley W, Martin GS, Brown SM, et al. Structure, process, and annual ICU mortality across 69 centers: United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group Critical Illness Outcomes Study. Crit Care Med. 2014;42(2):344-356. PubMed
11. Wise KR, Akopov VA, Williams BR, Jr., Ido MS, Leeper KV, Jr., Dressler DD. Hospitalists and intensivists in the medical ICU: a prospective observational study comparing mortality and length of stay between two staffing models. J Hosp Med. 2012;7(3):183-189. PubMed
12. Yoo EJ, Edwards JD, Dean ML, Dudley RA. Multidisciplinary Critical Care and Intensivist Staffing: Results of a Statewide Survey and Association With Mortality. J Intensive Care Med. 2016;31(5):325-332. PubMed
13. Society of Hospital Medicine. 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report. Philadelphia: Society of Hospital Medicine; 2016.
14. Siegal EM, Dressler DD, Dichter JR, Gorman MJ, Lipsett PA. Training a hospitalist workforce to address the intensivist shortage in American hospitals: a position paper from the Society of Hospital Medicine and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Crit Care Med. 2012;40(6):1952-1956. PubMed
15. Weled BJ, Adzhigirey LA, Hodgman TM, et al. Critical Care Delivery: The Importance of Process of Care and ICU Structure to Improved Outcomes: An Update From the American College of Critical Care Medicine Task Force on Models of Critical Care. Crit Care Med. 2015;43(7):1520-1525. PubMed
16. Kelley MA, Angus D, Chalfin DB, et al. The critical care crisis in the United States: a report from the profession. Chest. 2004;125(4):1514-1517. PubMed
17. Bion JF, Ramsay G, Roussos C, Burchardi H. Intensive care training and specialty status in Europe: international comparisons. Task Force on Educational issues of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine. Intensive Care Med. 1998;24(4);372-377. PubMed
18. Kahn JM, Branas CC, Schwab CW, Asch DA. Regionalization of medical critical care: what can we learn from the trauma experience? Crit Care Med. 2008;36(11):3085-3088. PubMed
Despite calls for board-certified intensivist physicians to lead critical care delivery,1-3 the intensivist shortage in the United States continues to worsen,4 with projected shortfalls of 22% by 2020 and 35% by 2030.5 Many hospitals currently have inadequate or no board-certified intensivist support.6 The intensivist shortage has necessitated the development of alternative intensive care unit (ICU) staffing models, including engagement in telemedicine,7 the utilization of advanced practice providers,8 and dependence on hospitalists9 to deliver critical care services to ICU patients. Presently, research does not clearly show consistent differences in clinical outcomes based on the training of the clinical provider, although optimized teamwork and team rounds in the ICU do seem to be associated with improved outcomes.10-12
In its 2016 annual survey of hospital medicine (HM) leaders, the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) documented that most HM groups care for ICU patients, with up to 80% of hospitalist groups in some regions delivering critical care.13 In many United States hospitals, hospitalists serve as the primary if not lone physician providers of critical care.6,14 HM, with its team-based approach and on-site presence, shares many of the key attributes and values that define high-functioning critical care teams, and many hospitalists likely capably deliver some critical care services.9 However, hospitalists are also a highly heterogeneous work force with varied exposure to and comfort with critical care medicine, making it difficult to generalize hospitalists’ scope of practice in the ICU.
Because hospitalists render a significant amount of critical care in the United States, we surveyed practicing hospitalists to understand their demographics and practice roles in the ICU setting and to ascertain how they are supported when doing so. Additionally, we sought to identify mismatches between the ICU services that hospitalists provide and what they feel prepared and supported to deliver. Finally, we attempted to elucidate how hospitalists who practice in the ICU might respond to novel educational offerings targeted to mitigate cognitive or procedural gaps.
METHODS
We developed and deployed a survey to address the aforementioned questions. The survey content was developed iteratively by the Critical Care Task Force of SHM’s Education Committee and subsequently approved by SHM’s Education Committee and Board of Directors. Members of the Critical Care Task Force include critical care physicians and hospitalists. The survey included 25 items (supplemental Appendix A). Seventeen questions addressed the demographics and practice roles of hospitalists in the ICU, 5 addressed cognitive and procedural practice gaps, and 3 addressed how hospitalists would respond to educational opportunities in critical care. We used conditional formatting to ensure that only respondents who deliver ICU care could answer questions related to ICU practice. The survey was delivered by using an online survey platform (Survey Monkey, San Mateo, CA).
The survey was deployed in 3 phases from March to October of 2016. Initially, we distributed a pilot survey to professional contacts of the Critical Care Task Force to solicit feedback and refine the survey’s format and content. These contacts were largely academic hospitalists from our local institutions. We then distributed the survey to hospitalists via professional networks with instructions to forward the link to interested hospitalists. Finally, we distributed the survey to approximately 4000 hospitalists randomly selected from SHM’s national listserv of approximately 12,000 hospitalists. Respondents could enter a drawing for a monetary prize upon completion of the survey.
None of the survey questions changed during the 3 phases of survey deployment, and the data reported herein were compiled from all 3 phases of the survey deployment. Frequency tables were created using Tableau (version 10.0; Tableau Software, Seattle, WA). Comparisons between categorical questions were made by using χ2 and Fischer exact tests to calculate P values for associations by using SAS (version 9.3; SAS Institute, Cary, NC). Associations with P values below .05 were considered statistically significant.
RESULTS
Objective 1: Demographics and Practice Role
Four hundred and twenty-five hospitalists responded to the survey. The first 2 phases (pilot survey and distribution via professional networks) generated 101 responses, and the third phase (via SHM’s listserv) generated an additional 324 responses. As the survey was anonymous, we could not determine which hospitals or geographic regions were represented. Three hundred and twenty-five of the 425 hospitalists who completed the survey (77%) reported that they delivered care in the ICU. Of these 325 hospitalists, 45 served only as consultants, while the remaining 280 (66% of the total sample) served as the primary attending physician in the ICU. Among these primary providers of care in the ICU, 60 (21%) practiced in rural settings and 220 (79%) practiced in nonrural settings (Figure 1).
The demographics of our respondents were similar to those of the SHM annual survey,13 in which 66% of respondents delivered ICU care. Forty-one percent of our respondents worked in critical access or small community hospitals, 24% in academic medical centers, and 34% in large community centers with an academic affiliation. The SHM annual survey cohort included more physicians from nonteaching hospitals (58.7%) and fewer from academic medical centers (14.8%).13
Hospitalists’ presence in the ICU varied by practice setting (Table 1).
Hospitalists were significantly more prevalent in rural ICUs than in nonrural settings (96% vs 73%; Table 2).
We found similar results when comparing academic hospitalists (those working in an academic medical center or academic-affiliated hospital) with nonacademic hospitalists (those working in critical access or small community centers). Specifically, hospitalists in nonacademic settings were significantly more prevalent in ICUs (90% vs 67%; Table 2), more likely to serve as the primary attending (81% vs 55%), and more likely to deliver all critical care services (64% vs 25%). Sixty-four percent of respondents from nonacademic settings reported that hospitalists manage all or most ICU patients in their hospital as opposed to 25% for academic respondents (χ2P value for association <.001). Intensivist availability was also significantly lower in nonacademic ICUs (Table 2).
We also sought to determine whether the ability to transfer critically ill patients to higher levels of care effectively mitigated shortfalls in intensivist staffing. When restricted to hospitalists who served as primary providers for ICU patients, 28% of all respondents and 51% of rural hospitalists reported transferring patients to a higher level of care.
Sixty-seven percent of hospitalists who served as primary physicians for ICU patients in any setting reported at least moderate difficulty arranging transfers to higher levels of care.
Objective 2: Identifying the Practice Gap
Hospitalists’ perceptions of practicing critical care beyond their skill level and without sufficient board-certified intensivist support varied by both practice location and practice type (Table 3).
There were similar discrepancies between academic and nonacademic respondents. Forty-two percent of respondents practicing in nonacademic settings reported being expected to practice beyond their scope at least some of the time, and 18% reported that intensivist support was never sufficient. This contrasts with academic hospitalists, of whom 35% reported feeling expected to practice outside their scope, and less than 4% reported the available support from intensivists was never sufficient. For comparisons of academic and nonacademic respondents, only perceptions of sufficient board-certified intensivist support reached statistical significance (Table 3).
The role of intensivists in making management decisions and the strategy for ventilator management decisions correlated significantly with perception of intensivist support (P < .001) but not with the perception of practicing beyond one’s scope. The number of ventilated patients did not correlate significantly with either perception of intensivist support or of being expected to practice beyond scope.
Difficulty transferring patients to a higher level of care was the only attribute that significantly correlated with hospitalists’ perceptions of having to practice beyond their skill level (P < .05; Table 3). Difficulty of transfer was also significantly associated with perceived adequacy of board-certified intensivist support (P < .001). Total hours of intensivist coverage, intensivist role in decision making, and ventilator management arrangements also correlated significantly with the perceived adequacy of board-certified intensivist support (P < .001 for all; Table 3).
Objective 3: Assessing Interest in Critical Care Education
More than 85% of respondents indicated interest in obtaining additional critical care training and some form of certification short of fellowship training. Preferred modes of content delivery included courses or precourses at national meetings, academies, or online modules. Hospitalists in smaller communities indicated preference for online resources.
DISCUSSION
This survey of a large national cohort of hospitalists from diverse practice settings validates previous studies suggesting that hospitalists deliver critical care services, most notably in community and rural hospitals.13 A substantial subset of our respondents represented rural practice settings, which allowed us to compare rural and nonrural hospitalists as well as those practicing in academic and nonacademic settings. In assessing both the objective services that hospitalists provided as well as their subjective perceptions of how they practiced, we could correlate factors associated with the sense of practicing beyond one’s skill or feeling inadequately supported by board-certified intensivists.
More than a third of responding hospitalists who practiced in the ICU reported that they practiced beyond their self-perceived skill level, and almost three-fourths indicated that they practiced without consistent or adequate board-certified intensivist support. Rural and nonacademic hospitalists were far more likely to report delivering critical care beyond their comfort level and having insufficient board-certified intensivist support.
Calls for board-certified intensivists to deliver critical care to all critically ill patients do not reflect the reality in many American hospitals and, either by intent or by default, hospitalists have become the major and often sole providers of critical care services in many hospitals without robust intensivist support. We suspect that this phenomenon has been consistently underreported in the literature because academic hospitalists generally do not practice critical care.15
Many potential solutions to the intensivist shortage have been explored. Prior efforts in the United States have focused largely on care standardization and the recruitment of more trainees into existing critical care training pathways.16 Other countries have created multidisciplinary critical care training pathways that delink critical care from specific subspecialty training programs.17 Another potential solution to ensure that critically ill patients receive care from board-certified intensivists is to regionalize critical care such that the sickest patients are consistently transferred to referral centers with robust intensivist staffing.1,18 While such an approach has been effectively implemented for trauma patients7, it has yet to materialize on a systemic basis for other critically ill cohorts. Moreover, our data suggest that hospitalists who attempt to transfer patients to higher levels of critical care find doing so burdensome and difficult.
Our surveyed hospitalists overwhelmingly expressed interest in augmenting their critical care skills and knowledge. However, most existing critical care educational offerings are not optimized for hospitalists, either focusing on very specific skills or knowledge (eg, procedural techniques or point-of-care ultrasound) or providing entry-level or very foundational education. None of these offerings provide comprehensive, structured training schemas for hospitalists who need to evolve beyond basic critical care skills to manage critically ill patients competently and consistently for extended periods of time.
Our study has several limitations. First, we estimate that about 10% of invited participants responded to this survey, but as respondents could forward the survey via professional networks, this is only an estimate. It is possible but unlikely that some respondents could have completed the survey more than once. Second, because our analysis identified only associations, we cannot infer causality for any of our findings. Third, the questionnaire was not designed to capture the acuity threshold at which point each respondent would prefer to transfer their patients into an ICU setting or to another institution for assistance in critical care management. We recognize that definitions and perceptions of patient acuity vary markedly from one hospital to the next, and a patient who can be comfortably managed in a floor setting in one hospital may require ICU care in a smaller or less well-resourced hospital. Practice patterns relating to acuity thresholds could have a substantial impact both on critical care patient volumes and on provider perceptions and, as such, warrant further study.
Finally, as respondents participated voluntarily, our sample may have overrepresented hospitalists who practice or are interested in critical care, thereby overestimating the scope of the problem and hospitalists’ interest in nonfellowship critical care training and certification. However, this seems unlikely given that, relative to SHM’s annual survey, we overrepresented hospitalists from academic and large community medical centers who generally provide less critical care than other hospitalists.13 Provided that roughly 85% of the estimated 50,000 American hospitalists practice outside of academic medical centers,13 perhaps as many as 37,000 hospitalists regularly deliver care to critically ill patients in ICUs. In light of the evolving intensivist shortage,4,5 this number seems likely to continue to grow. Whatever biases may exist in our sample, it is evident that a substantial number of ICU patients are managed by hospitalists who feel unprepared and undersupported to perform the task.
Without a massive and sustained increase in the number of board-certified intensivists or a systemic national plan to regionalize critical care delivery, hospitalists will continue to practice critical care, frequently with inadequate knowledge, skills, or intensivist support. Fortunately, these same hospitalists appear to be highly interested in augmenting their skills to care for their critically ill patients. The HM and critical care communities must rise to this challenge and help these providers deliver safe, appropriate, and high-quality care to their critically ill patients.
Disclosure
Mark V. Williams, MD, FACP, MHM, receives funding from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Society of Hospital Medicine honoraria.
Society of Hospital Medicine Resources
Despite calls for board-certified intensivist physicians to lead critical care delivery,1-3 the intensivist shortage in the United States continues to worsen,4 with projected shortfalls of 22% by 2020 and 35% by 2030.5 Many hospitals currently have inadequate or no board-certified intensivist support.6 The intensivist shortage has necessitated the development of alternative intensive care unit (ICU) staffing models, including engagement in telemedicine,7 the utilization of advanced practice providers,8 and dependence on hospitalists9 to deliver critical care services to ICU patients. Presently, research does not clearly show consistent differences in clinical outcomes based on the training of the clinical provider, although optimized teamwork and team rounds in the ICU do seem to be associated with improved outcomes.10-12
In its 2016 annual survey of hospital medicine (HM) leaders, the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) documented that most HM groups care for ICU patients, with up to 80% of hospitalist groups in some regions delivering critical care.13 In many United States hospitals, hospitalists serve as the primary if not lone physician providers of critical care.6,14 HM, with its team-based approach and on-site presence, shares many of the key attributes and values that define high-functioning critical care teams, and many hospitalists likely capably deliver some critical care services.9 However, hospitalists are also a highly heterogeneous work force with varied exposure to and comfort with critical care medicine, making it difficult to generalize hospitalists’ scope of practice in the ICU.
Because hospitalists render a significant amount of critical care in the United States, we surveyed practicing hospitalists to understand their demographics and practice roles in the ICU setting and to ascertain how they are supported when doing so. Additionally, we sought to identify mismatches between the ICU services that hospitalists provide and what they feel prepared and supported to deliver. Finally, we attempted to elucidate how hospitalists who practice in the ICU might respond to novel educational offerings targeted to mitigate cognitive or procedural gaps.
METHODS
We developed and deployed a survey to address the aforementioned questions. The survey content was developed iteratively by the Critical Care Task Force of SHM’s Education Committee and subsequently approved by SHM’s Education Committee and Board of Directors. Members of the Critical Care Task Force include critical care physicians and hospitalists. The survey included 25 items (supplemental Appendix A). Seventeen questions addressed the demographics and practice roles of hospitalists in the ICU, 5 addressed cognitive and procedural practice gaps, and 3 addressed how hospitalists would respond to educational opportunities in critical care. We used conditional formatting to ensure that only respondents who deliver ICU care could answer questions related to ICU practice. The survey was delivered by using an online survey platform (Survey Monkey, San Mateo, CA).
The survey was deployed in 3 phases from March to October of 2016. Initially, we distributed a pilot survey to professional contacts of the Critical Care Task Force to solicit feedback and refine the survey’s format and content. These contacts were largely academic hospitalists from our local institutions. We then distributed the survey to hospitalists via professional networks with instructions to forward the link to interested hospitalists. Finally, we distributed the survey to approximately 4000 hospitalists randomly selected from SHM’s national listserv of approximately 12,000 hospitalists. Respondents could enter a drawing for a monetary prize upon completion of the survey.
None of the survey questions changed during the 3 phases of survey deployment, and the data reported herein were compiled from all 3 phases of the survey deployment. Frequency tables were created using Tableau (version 10.0; Tableau Software, Seattle, WA). Comparisons between categorical questions were made by using χ2 and Fischer exact tests to calculate P values for associations by using SAS (version 9.3; SAS Institute, Cary, NC). Associations with P values below .05 were considered statistically significant.
RESULTS
Objective 1: Demographics and Practice Role
Four hundred and twenty-five hospitalists responded to the survey. The first 2 phases (pilot survey and distribution via professional networks) generated 101 responses, and the third phase (via SHM’s listserv) generated an additional 324 responses. As the survey was anonymous, we could not determine which hospitals or geographic regions were represented. Three hundred and twenty-five of the 425 hospitalists who completed the survey (77%) reported that they delivered care in the ICU. Of these 325 hospitalists, 45 served only as consultants, while the remaining 280 (66% of the total sample) served as the primary attending physician in the ICU. Among these primary providers of care in the ICU, 60 (21%) practiced in rural settings and 220 (79%) practiced in nonrural settings (Figure 1).
The demographics of our respondents were similar to those of the SHM annual survey,13 in which 66% of respondents delivered ICU care. Forty-one percent of our respondents worked in critical access or small community hospitals, 24% in academic medical centers, and 34% in large community centers with an academic affiliation. The SHM annual survey cohort included more physicians from nonteaching hospitals (58.7%) and fewer from academic medical centers (14.8%).13
Hospitalists’ presence in the ICU varied by practice setting (Table 1).
Hospitalists were significantly more prevalent in rural ICUs than in nonrural settings (96% vs 73%; Table 2).
We found similar results when comparing academic hospitalists (those working in an academic medical center or academic-affiliated hospital) with nonacademic hospitalists (those working in critical access or small community centers). Specifically, hospitalists in nonacademic settings were significantly more prevalent in ICUs (90% vs 67%; Table 2), more likely to serve as the primary attending (81% vs 55%), and more likely to deliver all critical care services (64% vs 25%). Sixty-four percent of respondents from nonacademic settings reported that hospitalists manage all or most ICU patients in their hospital as opposed to 25% for academic respondents (χ2P value for association <.001). Intensivist availability was also significantly lower in nonacademic ICUs (Table 2).
We also sought to determine whether the ability to transfer critically ill patients to higher levels of care effectively mitigated shortfalls in intensivist staffing. When restricted to hospitalists who served as primary providers for ICU patients, 28% of all respondents and 51% of rural hospitalists reported transferring patients to a higher level of care.
Sixty-seven percent of hospitalists who served as primary physicians for ICU patients in any setting reported at least moderate difficulty arranging transfers to higher levels of care.
Objective 2: Identifying the Practice Gap
Hospitalists’ perceptions of practicing critical care beyond their skill level and without sufficient board-certified intensivist support varied by both practice location and practice type (Table 3).
There were similar discrepancies between academic and nonacademic respondents. Forty-two percent of respondents practicing in nonacademic settings reported being expected to practice beyond their scope at least some of the time, and 18% reported that intensivist support was never sufficient. This contrasts with academic hospitalists, of whom 35% reported feeling expected to practice outside their scope, and less than 4% reported the available support from intensivists was never sufficient. For comparisons of academic and nonacademic respondents, only perceptions of sufficient board-certified intensivist support reached statistical significance (Table 3).
The role of intensivists in making management decisions and the strategy for ventilator management decisions correlated significantly with perception of intensivist support (P < .001) but not with the perception of practicing beyond one’s scope. The number of ventilated patients did not correlate significantly with either perception of intensivist support or of being expected to practice beyond scope.
Difficulty transferring patients to a higher level of care was the only attribute that significantly correlated with hospitalists’ perceptions of having to practice beyond their skill level (P < .05; Table 3). Difficulty of transfer was also significantly associated with perceived adequacy of board-certified intensivist support (P < .001). Total hours of intensivist coverage, intensivist role in decision making, and ventilator management arrangements also correlated significantly with the perceived adequacy of board-certified intensivist support (P < .001 for all; Table 3).
Objective 3: Assessing Interest in Critical Care Education
More than 85% of respondents indicated interest in obtaining additional critical care training and some form of certification short of fellowship training. Preferred modes of content delivery included courses or precourses at national meetings, academies, or online modules. Hospitalists in smaller communities indicated preference for online resources.
DISCUSSION
This survey of a large national cohort of hospitalists from diverse practice settings validates previous studies suggesting that hospitalists deliver critical care services, most notably in community and rural hospitals.13 A substantial subset of our respondents represented rural practice settings, which allowed us to compare rural and nonrural hospitalists as well as those practicing in academic and nonacademic settings. In assessing both the objective services that hospitalists provided as well as their subjective perceptions of how they practiced, we could correlate factors associated with the sense of practicing beyond one’s skill or feeling inadequately supported by board-certified intensivists.
More than a third of responding hospitalists who practiced in the ICU reported that they practiced beyond their self-perceived skill level, and almost three-fourths indicated that they practiced without consistent or adequate board-certified intensivist support. Rural and nonacademic hospitalists were far more likely to report delivering critical care beyond their comfort level and having insufficient board-certified intensivist support.
Calls for board-certified intensivists to deliver critical care to all critically ill patients do not reflect the reality in many American hospitals and, either by intent or by default, hospitalists have become the major and often sole providers of critical care services in many hospitals without robust intensivist support. We suspect that this phenomenon has been consistently underreported in the literature because academic hospitalists generally do not practice critical care.15
Many potential solutions to the intensivist shortage have been explored. Prior efforts in the United States have focused largely on care standardization and the recruitment of more trainees into existing critical care training pathways.16 Other countries have created multidisciplinary critical care training pathways that delink critical care from specific subspecialty training programs.17 Another potential solution to ensure that critically ill patients receive care from board-certified intensivists is to regionalize critical care such that the sickest patients are consistently transferred to referral centers with robust intensivist staffing.1,18 While such an approach has been effectively implemented for trauma patients7, it has yet to materialize on a systemic basis for other critically ill cohorts. Moreover, our data suggest that hospitalists who attempt to transfer patients to higher levels of critical care find doing so burdensome and difficult.
Our surveyed hospitalists overwhelmingly expressed interest in augmenting their critical care skills and knowledge. However, most existing critical care educational offerings are not optimized for hospitalists, either focusing on very specific skills or knowledge (eg, procedural techniques or point-of-care ultrasound) or providing entry-level or very foundational education. None of these offerings provide comprehensive, structured training schemas for hospitalists who need to evolve beyond basic critical care skills to manage critically ill patients competently and consistently for extended periods of time.
Our study has several limitations. First, we estimate that about 10% of invited participants responded to this survey, but as respondents could forward the survey via professional networks, this is only an estimate. It is possible but unlikely that some respondents could have completed the survey more than once. Second, because our analysis identified only associations, we cannot infer causality for any of our findings. Third, the questionnaire was not designed to capture the acuity threshold at which point each respondent would prefer to transfer their patients into an ICU setting or to another institution for assistance in critical care management. We recognize that definitions and perceptions of patient acuity vary markedly from one hospital to the next, and a patient who can be comfortably managed in a floor setting in one hospital may require ICU care in a smaller or less well-resourced hospital. Practice patterns relating to acuity thresholds could have a substantial impact both on critical care patient volumes and on provider perceptions and, as such, warrant further study.
Finally, as respondents participated voluntarily, our sample may have overrepresented hospitalists who practice or are interested in critical care, thereby overestimating the scope of the problem and hospitalists’ interest in nonfellowship critical care training and certification. However, this seems unlikely given that, relative to SHM’s annual survey, we overrepresented hospitalists from academic and large community medical centers who generally provide less critical care than other hospitalists.13 Provided that roughly 85% of the estimated 50,000 American hospitalists practice outside of academic medical centers,13 perhaps as many as 37,000 hospitalists regularly deliver care to critically ill patients in ICUs. In light of the evolving intensivist shortage,4,5 this number seems likely to continue to grow. Whatever biases may exist in our sample, it is evident that a substantial number of ICU patients are managed by hospitalists who feel unprepared and undersupported to perform the task.
Without a massive and sustained increase in the number of board-certified intensivists or a systemic national plan to regionalize critical care delivery, hospitalists will continue to practice critical care, frequently with inadequate knowledge, skills, or intensivist support. Fortunately, these same hospitalists appear to be highly interested in augmenting their skills to care for their critically ill patients. The HM and critical care communities must rise to this challenge and help these providers deliver safe, appropriate, and high-quality care to their critically ill patients.
Disclosure
Mark V. Williams, MD, FACP, MHM, receives funding from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Society of Hospital Medicine honoraria.
Society of Hospital Medicine Resources
1. Barnato AE, Kahn JM, Rubenfeld GD, et al. Prioritizing the organization and management of intensive care services in the United States: the PrOMIS Conference. Crit Care Med. 2007;35(4):1003-1011. PubMed
2. The Leapfrog Group. Factsheet: ICU Physician Staffing. Leapfrog Hospital Survey. Washington, DC: The Leapfrog Group; 2016.
3. Baumann MH, Simpson SQ, Stahl M, Raoof S, Marciniuk DD, Gutterman DD. First, do no harm: less training not equal quality care. Am J Crit Care. Jul 2012;21(4):227-230. PubMed
4. Krell K. Critical care workforce. Crit Care Med. 2008;36(4):1350-1353. PubMed
5. Angus DC, Kelley MA, Schmitz RJ, White A, Popovich J, Jr. Caring for the critically ill patient. Current and projected workforce requirements for care of the critically ill and patients with pulmonary disease: can we meet the requirements of an aging population? JAMA. 2000;284(21):2762-2770. PubMed
6. Hyzy RC, Flanders SA, Pronovost PJ, et al. Characteristics of intensive care units in Michigan: not an open and closed case. J Hosp Med. 2010;5(1):4-9. PubMed
7. Kahn JM, Cicero BD, Wallace DJ, Iwashyna TJ. Adoption of ICU telemedicine in the United States. Crit Care Med. 2014;42(2):362-368. PubMed
8. Kleinpell RM, Ely EW, Grabenkort R. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants in the intensive care unit: an evidence-based review. Crit Care Med. 2008;36(10):2888-2897. PubMed
9. Heisler M. Hospitalists and intensivists: partners in caring for the critically ill--the time has come. J Hosp Med. 2010;5(1):1-3. PubMed
10. Checkley W, Martin GS, Brown SM, et al. Structure, process, and annual ICU mortality across 69 centers: United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group Critical Illness Outcomes Study. Crit Care Med. 2014;42(2):344-356. PubMed
11. Wise KR, Akopov VA, Williams BR, Jr., Ido MS, Leeper KV, Jr., Dressler DD. Hospitalists and intensivists in the medical ICU: a prospective observational study comparing mortality and length of stay between two staffing models. J Hosp Med. 2012;7(3):183-189. PubMed
12. Yoo EJ, Edwards JD, Dean ML, Dudley RA. Multidisciplinary Critical Care and Intensivist Staffing: Results of a Statewide Survey and Association With Mortality. J Intensive Care Med. 2016;31(5):325-332. PubMed
13. Society of Hospital Medicine. 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report. Philadelphia: Society of Hospital Medicine; 2016.
14. Siegal EM, Dressler DD, Dichter JR, Gorman MJ, Lipsett PA. Training a hospitalist workforce to address the intensivist shortage in American hospitals: a position paper from the Society of Hospital Medicine and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Crit Care Med. 2012;40(6):1952-1956. PubMed
15. Weled BJ, Adzhigirey LA, Hodgman TM, et al. Critical Care Delivery: The Importance of Process of Care and ICU Structure to Improved Outcomes: An Update From the American College of Critical Care Medicine Task Force on Models of Critical Care. Crit Care Med. 2015;43(7):1520-1525. PubMed
16. Kelley MA, Angus D, Chalfin DB, et al. The critical care crisis in the United States: a report from the profession. Chest. 2004;125(4):1514-1517. PubMed
17. Bion JF, Ramsay G, Roussos C, Burchardi H. Intensive care training and specialty status in Europe: international comparisons. Task Force on Educational issues of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine. Intensive Care Med. 1998;24(4);372-377. PubMed
18. Kahn JM, Branas CC, Schwab CW, Asch DA. Regionalization of medical critical care: what can we learn from the trauma experience? Crit Care Med. 2008;36(11):3085-3088. PubMed
1. Barnato AE, Kahn JM, Rubenfeld GD, et al. Prioritizing the organization and management of intensive care services in the United States: the PrOMIS Conference. Crit Care Med. 2007;35(4):1003-1011. PubMed
2. The Leapfrog Group. Factsheet: ICU Physician Staffing. Leapfrog Hospital Survey. Washington, DC: The Leapfrog Group; 2016.
3. Baumann MH, Simpson SQ, Stahl M, Raoof S, Marciniuk DD, Gutterman DD. First, do no harm: less training not equal quality care. Am J Crit Care. Jul 2012;21(4):227-230. PubMed
4. Krell K. Critical care workforce. Crit Care Med. 2008;36(4):1350-1353. PubMed
5. Angus DC, Kelley MA, Schmitz RJ, White A, Popovich J, Jr. Caring for the critically ill patient. Current and projected workforce requirements for care of the critically ill and patients with pulmonary disease: can we meet the requirements of an aging population? JAMA. 2000;284(21):2762-2770. PubMed
6. Hyzy RC, Flanders SA, Pronovost PJ, et al. Characteristics of intensive care units in Michigan: not an open and closed case. J Hosp Med. 2010;5(1):4-9. PubMed
7. Kahn JM, Cicero BD, Wallace DJ, Iwashyna TJ. Adoption of ICU telemedicine in the United States. Crit Care Med. 2014;42(2):362-368. PubMed
8. Kleinpell RM, Ely EW, Grabenkort R. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants in the intensive care unit: an evidence-based review. Crit Care Med. 2008;36(10):2888-2897. PubMed
9. Heisler M. Hospitalists and intensivists: partners in caring for the critically ill--the time has come. J Hosp Med. 2010;5(1):1-3. PubMed
10. Checkley W, Martin GS, Brown SM, et al. Structure, process, and annual ICU mortality across 69 centers: United States Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group Critical Illness Outcomes Study. Crit Care Med. 2014;42(2):344-356. PubMed
11. Wise KR, Akopov VA, Williams BR, Jr., Ido MS, Leeper KV, Jr., Dressler DD. Hospitalists and intensivists in the medical ICU: a prospective observational study comparing mortality and length of stay between two staffing models. J Hosp Med. 2012;7(3):183-189. PubMed
12. Yoo EJ, Edwards JD, Dean ML, Dudley RA. Multidisciplinary Critical Care and Intensivist Staffing: Results of a Statewide Survey and Association With Mortality. J Intensive Care Med. 2016;31(5):325-332. PubMed
13. Society of Hospital Medicine. 2016 State of Hospital Medicine Report. Philadelphia: Society of Hospital Medicine; 2016.
14. Siegal EM, Dressler DD, Dichter JR, Gorman MJ, Lipsett PA. Training a hospitalist workforce to address the intensivist shortage in American hospitals: a position paper from the Society of Hospital Medicine and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Crit Care Med. 2012;40(6):1952-1956. PubMed
15. Weled BJ, Adzhigirey LA, Hodgman TM, et al. Critical Care Delivery: The Importance of Process of Care and ICU Structure to Improved Outcomes: An Update From the American College of Critical Care Medicine Task Force on Models of Critical Care. Crit Care Med. 2015;43(7):1520-1525. PubMed
16. Kelley MA, Angus D, Chalfin DB, et al. The critical care crisis in the United States: a report from the profession. Chest. 2004;125(4):1514-1517. PubMed
17. Bion JF, Ramsay G, Roussos C, Burchardi H. Intensive care training and specialty status in Europe: international comparisons. Task Force on Educational issues of the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine. Intensive Care Med. 1998;24(4);372-377. PubMed
18. Kahn JM, Branas CC, Schwab CW, Asch DA. Regionalization of medical critical care: what can we learn from the trauma experience? Crit Care Med. 2008;36(11):3085-3088. PubMed
© 2018 Society of Hospital Medicine