The Greenville (S.C.) Health System in 2011 instituted a unique patient tracking and surgery scheduling system developed with Integrated Business Systems and Services, also based in South Carolina. The new system, called OR-Max, replaces the ubiquitous, giant dry-erase schedule board with digital displays. The system is connected to pre- and post-op departments, as well as to another electronic board in the family waiting areas. A radio frequency identification number assigned to each new patient tracks the patient’s status through the perioperative process. Text messages update status changes to staff.

“The display boards operate like arrival and departure boards at an airport,” says Gilbert Ritchie, PhD, director of anesthesia and perfusion services. “Instead of a flight number, staff follows a case number” as they watch for status changes.

OR-Max helps to pinpoint delays, facilitates rescheduling, improves workflow, and increases patient satisfaction while reducing costs, according to the health system. GHS says it has seen a 13% increase in staff productivity under the digital scheduling system.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

The Greenville (S.C.) Health System in 2011 instituted a unique patient tracking and surgery scheduling system developed with Integrated Business Systems and Services, also based in South Carolina. The new system, called OR-Max, replaces the ubiquitous, giant dry-erase schedule board with digital displays. The system is connected to pre- and post-op departments, as well as to another electronic board in the family waiting areas. A radio frequency identification number assigned to each new patient tracks the patient’s status through the perioperative process. Text messages update status changes to staff.

“The display boards operate like arrival and departure boards at an airport,” says Gilbert Ritchie, PhD, director of anesthesia and perfusion services. “Instead of a flight number, staff follows a case number” as they watch for status changes.

OR-Max helps to pinpoint delays, facilitates rescheduling, improves workflow, and increases patient satisfaction while reducing costs, according to the health system. GHS says it has seen a 13% increase in staff productivity under the digital scheduling system.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

The Greenville (S.C.) Health System in 2011 instituted a unique patient tracking and surgery scheduling system developed with Integrated Business Systems and Services, also based in South Carolina. The new system, called OR-Max, replaces the ubiquitous, giant dry-erase schedule board with digital displays. The system is connected to pre- and post-op departments, as well as to another electronic board in the family waiting areas. A radio frequency identification number assigned to each new patient tracks the patient’s status through the perioperative process. Text messages update status changes to staff.

“The display boards operate like arrival and departure boards at an airport,” says Gilbert Ritchie, PhD, director of anesthesia and perfusion services. “Instead of a flight number, staff follows a case number” as they watch for status changes.

OR-Max helps to pinpoint delays, facilitates rescheduling, improves workflow, and increases patient satisfaction while reducing costs, according to the health system. GHS says it has seen a 13% increase in staff productivity under the digital scheduling system.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

The Association of Health Care Journalists, a professional association that includes 1,400 journalists, is tackling some of the barriers consumers and advocates face when trying to access such information as hospital safety records. AHCJ’s www.HospitalInfections.org is a free, searchable news application that went live in March with detailed reports of deficiencies cited in federal inspection visits for acute- and critical-access hospitals nationwide.

Through years of advocacy, AHCJ has filed Freedom of Information Act requests and negotiated with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to get access to hospital safety information in electronic form.

CMS’ Hospital Compare website (www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare) and the Joint Commission’s Quality Check (www.qualitycheck.org) program both publicly report hospital quality data, but they have significant time lags and data that are difficult for the average consumer to understand, according to AHCJ. The association touts its new site as an “early attempt by an advocacy group to make hospital safety information easier to access and more consumer-driven.”

“Being able to easily review the performance of your local hospital is vital for health-care journalists and for the public,” AHCJ president Charles Ornstein, a senior reporter at ProPublica in New York, said in a statement.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

The Association of Health Care Journalists, a professional association that includes 1,400 journalists, is tackling some of the barriers consumers and advocates face when trying to access such information as hospital safety records. AHCJ’s www.HospitalInfections.org is a free, searchable news application that went live in March with detailed reports of deficiencies cited in federal inspection visits for acute- and critical-access hospitals nationwide.

Through years of advocacy, AHCJ has filed Freedom of Information Act requests and negotiated with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to get access to hospital safety information in electronic form.

CMS’ Hospital Compare website (www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare) and the Joint Commission’s Quality Check (www.qualitycheck.org) program both publicly report hospital quality data, but they have significant time lags and data that are difficult for the average consumer to understand, according to AHCJ. The association touts its new site as an “early attempt by an advocacy group to make hospital safety information easier to access and more consumer-driven.”

“Being able to easily review the performance of your local hospital is vital for health-care journalists and for the public,” AHCJ president Charles Ornstein, a senior reporter at ProPublica in New York, said in a statement.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

The Association of Health Care Journalists, a professional association that includes 1,400 journalists, is tackling some of the barriers consumers and advocates face when trying to access such information as hospital safety records. AHCJ’s www.HospitalInfections.org is a free, searchable news application that went live in March with detailed reports of deficiencies cited in federal inspection visits for acute- and critical-access hospitals nationwide.

Through years of advocacy, AHCJ has filed Freedom of Information Act requests and negotiated with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to get access to hospital safety information in electronic form.

CMS’ Hospital Compare website (www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare) and the Joint Commission’s Quality Check (www.qualitycheck.org) program both publicly report hospital quality data, but they have significant time lags and data that are difficult for the average consumer to understand, according to AHCJ. The association touts its new site as an “early attempt by an advocacy group to make hospital safety information easier to access and more consumer-driven.”

“Being able to easily review the performance of your local hospital is vital for health-care journalists and for the public,” AHCJ president Charles Ornstein, a senior reporter at ProPublica in New York, said in a statement.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

Curriculums using Lean quality-improvement (QI) principles and techniques are becoming entrenched in medical teaching programs across the country.

A curriculum based on Lean QI is teaching medical residents at Boston Medical Center techniques based on successes in manufacturing and service industries, according to Charlene Weigel, MD, who now works as a hospitalist at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass. Residents also are learning about implementation of Lean principles at the medical center, Dr. Weigel and co-authors report in a study published in the American Journal of Medical Quality.¹

“In Week One, we gave an introduction to QI and explained what Lean means,” Dr. Weigel says. Three other interactive sessions explored such techniques as how to create process maps and root-cause analysis, and identifying steps that aren’t helpful. The 90 residents and eight Boston University School of Public Health students also created 17 group QI project plans. “The goal was for the QI classwork and ideas to become implemented in hospital QI projects, but logistically, we had to scale back expectations for that initial go-round,” Dr. Weigel says.

The medical center recently started a second cycle of the QI course, with students from the first cycle encouraged to continue their QI projects on their own. One group submitted its project as an Institute for Healthcare Improvement storyboard at a national meeting.

“The experience also exposed the residents to our interprofessional team structure, which reflects their future working relationships and professional roles in QI,” Dr. Weigel says.

Lean concepts also are the basis for the Perfecting Patient Care University (PPCU, www.prhi.org/perfecting-patient-care/what-is-ppc), a QI training program for health-care leaders and clinicians offered in a variety of formats by the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, a regional health collaborative. An evaluation of outcomes at PPCU was published online in the American Journal of Medical Quality in April.² The same journal also describes the curriculum, program evaluation, and lessons learned by SHM’s Quality and Safety Educators Academy (http://sites.hospitalmedicine.org/qsea), which provides training in QI and patient safety for teaching faculty.³ The academy, a 2.5-day course, is co-sponsored by the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

Curriculums using Lean quality-improvement (QI) principles and techniques are becoming entrenched in medical teaching programs across the country.

A curriculum based on Lean QI is teaching medical residents at Boston Medical Center techniques based on successes in manufacturing and service industries, according to Charlene Weigel, MD, who now works as a hospitalist at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass. Residents also are learning about implementation of Lean principles at the medical center, Dr. Weigel and co-authors report in a study published in the American Journal of Medical Quality.¹

“In Week One, we gave an introduction to QI and explained what Lean means,” Dr. Weigel says. Three other interactive sessions explored such techniques as how to create process maps and root-cause analysis, and identifying steps that aren’t helpful. The 90 residents and eight Boston University School of Public Health students also created 17 group QI project plans. “The goal was for the QI classwork and ideas to become implemented in hospital QI projects, but logistically, we had to scale back expectations for that initial go-round,” Dr. Weigel says.

The medical center recently started a second cycle of the QI course, with students from the first cycle encouraged to continue their QI projects on their own. One group submitted its project as an Institute for Healthcare Improvement storyboard at a national meeting.

“The experience also exposed the residents to our interprofessional team structure, which reflects their future working relationships and professional roles in QI,” Dr. Weigel says.

Lean concepts also are the basis for the Perfecting Patient Care University (PPCU, www.prhi.org/perfecting-patient-care/what-is-ppc), a QI training program for health-care leaders and clinicians offered in a variety of formats by the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, a regional health collaborative. An evaluation of outcomes at PPCU was published online in the American Journal of Medical Quality in April.² The same journal also describes the curriculum, program evaluation, and lessons learned by SHM’s Quality and Safety Educators Academy (http://sites.hospitalmedicine.org/qsea), which provides training in QI and patient safety for teaching faculty.³ The academy, a 2.5-day course, is co-sponsored by the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

Curriculums using Lean quality-improvement (QI) principles and techniques are becoming entrenched in medical teaching programs across the country.

A curriculum based on Lean QI is teaching medical residents at Boston Medical Center techniques based on successes in manufacturing and service industries, according to Charlene Weigel, MD, who now works as a hospitalist at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Mass. Residents also are learning about implementation of Lean principles at the medical center, Dr. Weigel and co-authors report in a study published in the American Journal of Medical Quality.¹

“In Week One, we gave an introduction to QI and explained what Lean means,” Dr. Weigel says. Three other interactive sessions explored such techniques as how to create process maps and root-cause analysis, and identifying steps that aren’t helpful. The 90 residents and eight Boston University School of Public Health students also created 17 group QI project plans. “The goal was for the QI classwork and ideas to become implemented in hospital QI projects, but logistically, we had to scale back expectations for that initial go-round,” Dr. Weigel says.

The medical center recently started a second cycle of the QI course, with students from the first cycle encouraged to continue their QI projects on their own. One group submitted its project as an Institute for Healthcare Improvement storyboard at a national meeting.

“The experience also exposed the residents to our interprofessional team structure, which reflects their future working relationships and professional roles in QI,” Dr. Weigel says.

Lean concepts also are the basis for the Perfecting Patient Care University (PPCU, www.prhi.org/perfecting-patient-care/what-is-ppc), a QI training program for health-care leaders and clinicians offered in a variety of formats by the Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, a regional health collaborative. An evaluation of outcomes at PPCU was published online in the American Journal of Medical Quality in April.² The same journal also describes the curriculum, program evaluation, and lessons learned by SHM’s Quality and Safety Educators Academy (http://sites.hospitalmedicine.org/qsea), which provides training in QI and patient safety for teaching faculty.³ The academy, a 2.5-day course, is co-sponsored by the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine.

Larry Beresford is a freelance writer in San Francisco

References

1. Weigel C, Suen W, Gupta G. Using Lean methodology to teach quality improvement to internal medicine residents at a safety net hospital. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Feb 4 [Epub ahead of print].
2. Morganti KG, Lovejoy S, Beckjord EB, Haviland AM, Haas AC, Farley DO. A retrospective evaluation of the Perfecting Patient Care University training program for health care organizations. Am J Med Qual. 2013 Apr 9 [Epub ahead of print].
3. Myers JS, Tess A, Glasheen JJ, et al. The Quality and Safety Educators’ Academy: fulfilling an unmet need for faculty development. Am J Med Qual.  2013 Apr 11 [Epub ahead of print].
4. Dong XQ, Simon MA. Elder abuse as a risk factor for hospitalization in older persons. JAMA Intern Med. 2013 Apr 8:1-7. doi: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.238 [Epub ahead of print].
5. Cisco mConcierge. 90% American workers use their own smartphones for work. Cisco mConcierge website. Available at: http://www.ciscomcon.com/sw/swchannel/registration/internet/registrationcfm?SWAPPID=91&RegPageID=350200&SWTHEMEID=12949. Accessed

A veritable perfect storm of relationships brought hospitalist Jairy Hunter, MD, MBA, SFHM, to “Hospitalists on the Hill 2013,” a daylong advocacy affair that preceded HM13 last month.

First, Dr. Hunter was born and bred—and now lives—in South Carolina, a close-knit state where leaders across industries tend to run in the same circles, or at least have relatives who do. Second, Dr. Hunter’s father, Jairy Hunter Jr., is the longtime president of Charleston Southern University, where Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) earned his undergraduate degree when it was still called Baptist College at Charleston. And three, Dr. Hunter is associate executive medical director of one of the state’s flagship health-care institutions, Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

So it was that SHM set Dr. Hunter up in meetings with the offices of Scott, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), and—for the day at least—made Dr. Hunter the voice of hospital medicine.

“It was a little bit demystifying of an experience to be able to know there’s actually people you can talk to and you can develop a relationship with,” says Dr. Hunter, who also serves on Team Hospitalist. “I thought that was very rewarding.”

The connections made by Dr. Hunter are the point of the annual trek made by SHM leaders and members to lobby legislators and federal staffers “on the way policies affect your practice and your patients,” SHM says on its website (www.hospitalmedicine.org/advocacy). This year’s volunteer effort was by far the largest ever, says Public Policy Committee chair Ron Greeno, MD, FCCP, MHM. More than 150 hospitalists participated in training, 113 hospitalists visited Capitol Hill, and scores more had to be turned away. All told, hospitalists held 409 individual meetings with legislators and staff members.

“Quite frankly, if we’d have had the budget, we could have had another 100 to 150 people come,” Dr. Greeno says. “That’s how many people wanted to go.”

Dr. Greeno attributes the interest to two factors. One, having the annual meeting at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, just outside Washington, D.C, makes the Hill trip a natural extension. Two, the current landscape of health-care reform has motivated many physicians to become more involved than they might otherwise be. One challenge of having so many first-timers making this year’s trip was making sure they were properly prepared. To hone the message, SHM gave the group a few hours of education by former legislative staffer Stephanie Vance of Advocacy Associates, a communications firm that helps organizations, such as medical societies, tailor their message to policymakers. Vance told hospitalists a personal visit with a constituent often becomes the most influential type of advocacy.

“That’s why it was easy to make an initial connection, because these staffers are from where I’m from, friends with people that I’m friends with,” Dr. Hunter says.

Unique Approach

SHM CEO Larry Wellikson, MD, SFHM, says the society tries to differentiate itself from other organizations through its grassroots approach to advocacy. More important, the society refrains from giving a long list of legislative requests that are self-serving.

“We’re someone they want to talk to because we’re not coming there to just say, ‘Here’s a power play for hospitalists,’” Dr. Wellikson says. “We come and try to provide solutions.”

To that end, this year’s lobbying effort was targeted to topics important both to HM and the health-care system:

• Repealing the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for Medicare payments, specifically via the proposed Medicare Physician Payment Innovation Act of 2013 (H.R. 574);
• Solving the quagmire of observation status time not counting toward the required three consecutive overnights as an inpatient needed to qualify for Medicare benefits at a skilled nursing facility, by supporting the Improving Access to Medicare Coverage Act of 2013 (H.R. 1179, S. 569); and
• Getting the federal government to commit to providing $434 million in funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in fiscal 2014.

“The message that we’re sending resonated with the people we met with on both sides of the aisle,” Dr. Greeno says. “The SGR, for instance, they know there needs to be a fix. We want to serve as a resource for them as they start to figure out the answer to the question: What are we going to replace it with?

“What we want to do is make everybody on the Hill understand that we can be relied upon as a resource when they’re looking for solutions,” he says.

Focused on Follow-Up

And that’s where rank-and-filers, such as Dr. Hunter, have to take charge. So for his Hill Day visits, he tried to stand out. Everyone he met with got a lapel pin in the shape of a South Carolina state flag, which has become a popular fashion statement in recent years. And Scott also got a pin from Charleston Southern University, his alma mater. The gestures were small, but they served as icebreakers and reminders that Dr. Hunter and the people he met are bound by service to the residents of the Palmetto State.

Dr. Hunter also hopes the small token will be that little extra that makes him memorable enough that the next time a Congressional staffer has an SGR question, they’ll ask him and not a doctor from another specialty.

“I’m interested to see how much feedback I get back from them,” he says. “I can feed them all day long, but I don’t want to be that crazy guy bugging them. If they respond back to me, I can hopefully make more inroads.”

He certainly would if Dr. Greeno gets his way. Moving forward, SHM hopes to be able to rely more on local advocates pushing for reform than just a once-a-year major event and formal positions drafted by SHM’s staffers or the Public Policy Committee. Dr. Greeno says the physicians who participated in this year’s Hill trip are likely to find they will be asked to be the first cohort of a grassroots initiative meant to deliver the society’s message more routinely.

“These are not easy things to change because there are not easy solutions,” Dr. Greeno adds. “If you have just one meeting on the Hill, you’ll have no impact at all. You have to follow up. You have to do it consistently. And you have to have a consistent message. And we will.”

Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.

A veritable perfect storm of relationships brought hospitalist Jairy Hunter, MD, MBA, SFHM, to “Hospitalists on the Hill 2013,” a daylong advocacy affair that preceded HM13 last month.

First, Dr. Hunter was born and bred—and now lives—in South Carolina, a close-knit state where leaders across industries tend to run in the same circles, or at least have relatives who do. Second, Dr. Hunter’s father, Jairy Hunter Jr., is the longtime president of Charleston Southern University, where Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) earned his undergraduate degree when it was still called Baptist College at Charleston. And three, Dr. Hunter is associate executive medical director of one of the state’s flagship health-care institutions, Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

So it was that SHM set Dr. Hunter up in meetings with the offices of Scott, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), and—for the day at least—made Dr. Hunter the voice of hospital medicine.

“It was a little bit demystifying of an experience to be able to know there’s actually people you can talk to and you can develop a relationship with,” says Dr. Hunter, who also serves on Team Hospitalist. “I thought that was very rewarding.”

The connections made by Dr. Hunter are the point of the annual trek made by SHM leaders and members to lobby legislators and federal staffers “on the way policies affect your practice and your patients,” SHM says on its website (www.hospitalmedicine.org/advocacy). This year’s volunteer effort was by far the largest ever, says Public Policy Committee chair Ron Greeno, MD, FCCP, MHM. More than 150 hospitalists participated in training, 113 hospitalists visited Capitol Hill, and scores more had to be turned away. All told, hospitalists held 409 individual meetings with legislators and staff members.

“Quite frankly, if we’d have had the budget, we could have had another 100 to 150 people come,” Dr. Greeno says. “That’s how many people wanted to go.”

Dr. Greeno attributes the interest to two factors. One, having the annual meeting at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, just outside Washington, D.C, makes the Hill trip a natural extension. Two, the current landscape of health-care reform has motivated many physicians to become more involved than they might otherwise be. One challenge of having so many first-timers making this year’s trip was making sure they were properly prepared. To hone the message, SHM gave the group a few hours of education by former legislative staffer Stephanie Vance of Advocacy Associates, a communications firm that helps organizations, such as medical societies, tailor their message to policymakers. Vance told hospitalists a personal visit with a constituent often becomes the most influential type of advocacy.

“That’s why it was easy to make an initial connection, because these staffers are from where I’m from, friends with people that I’m friends with,” Dr. Hunter says.

Unique Approach

SHM CEO Larry Wellikson, MD, SFHM, says the society tries to differentiate itself from other organizations through its grassroots approach to advocacy. More important, the society refrains from giving a long list of legislative requests that are self-serving.

“We’re someone they want to talk to because we’re not coming there to just say, ‘Here’s a power play for hospitalists,’” Dr. Wellikson says. “We come and try to provide solutions.”

To that end, this year’s lobbying effort was targeted to topics important both to HM and the health-care system:

• Repealing the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for Medicare payments, specifically via the proposed Medicare Physician Payment Innovation Act of 2013 (H.R. 574);
• Solving the quagmire of observation status time not counting toward the required three consecutive overnights as an inpatient needed to qualify for Medicare benefits at a skilled nursing facility, by supporting the Improving Access to Medicare Coverage Act of 2013 (H.R. 1179, S. 569); and
• Getting the federal government to commit to providing $434 million in funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in fiscal 2014.

“The message that we’re sending resonated with the people we met with on both sides of the aisle,” Dr. Greeno says. “The SGR, for instance, they know there needs to be a fix. We want to serve as a resource for them as they start to figure out the answer to the question: What are we going to replace it with?

“What we want to do is make everybody on the Hill understand that we can be relied upon as a resource when they’re looking for solutions,” he says.

Focused on Follow-Up

And that’s where rank-and-filers, such as Dr. Hunter, have to take charge. So for his Hill Day visits, he tried to stand out. Everyone he met with got a lapel pin in the shape of a South Carolina state flag, which has become a popular fashion statement in recent years. And Scott also got a pin from Charleston Southern University, his alma mater. The gestures were small, but they served as icebreakers and reminders that Dr. Hunter and the people he met are bound by service to the residents of the Palmetto State.

Dr. Hunter also hopes the small token will be that little extra that makes him memorable enough that the next time a Congressional staffer has an SGR question, they’ll ask him and not a doctor from another specialty.

“I’m interested to see how much feedback I get back from them,” he says. “I can feed them all day long, but I don’t want to be that crazy guy bugging them. If they respond back to me, I can hopefully make more inroads.”

He certainly would if Dr. Greeno gets his way. Moving forward, SHM hopes to be able to rely more on local advocates pushing for reform than just a once-a-year major event and formal positions drafted by SHM’s staffers or the Public Policy Committee. Dr. Greeno says the physicians who participated in this year’s Hill trip are likely to find they will be asked to be the first cohort of a grassroots initiative meant to deliver the society’s message more routinely.

“These are not easy things to change because there are not easy solutions,” Dr. Greeno adds. “If you have just one meeting on the Hill, you’ll have no impact at all. You have to follow up. You have to do it consistently. And you have to have a consistent message. And we will.”

Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.

A veritable perfect storm of relationships brought hospitalist Jairy Hunter, MD, MBA, SFHM, to “Hospitalists on the Hill 2013,” a daylong advocacy affair that preceded HM13 last month.

First, Dr. Hunter was born and bred—and now lives—in South Carolina, a close-knit state where leaders across industries tend to run in the same circles, or at least have relatives who do. Second, Dr. Hunter’s father, Jairy Hunter Jr., is the longtime president of Charleston Southern University, where Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) earned his undergraduate degree when it was still called Baptist College at Charleston. And three, Dr. Hunter is associate executive medical director of one of the state’s flagship health-care institutions, Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.

So it was that SHM set Dr. Hunter up in meetings with the offices of Scott, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), and—for the day at least—made Dr. Hunter the voice of hospital medicine.

“It was a little bit demystifying of an experience to be able to know there’s actually people you can talk to and you can develop a relationship with,” says Dr. Hunter, who also serves on Team Hospitalist. “I thought that was very rewarding.”

The connections made by Dr. Hunter are the point of the annual trek made by SHM leaders and members to lobby legislators and federal staffers “on the way policies affect your practice and your patients,” SHM says on its website (www.hospitalmedicine.org/advocacy). This year’s volunteer effort was by far the largest ever, says Public Policy Committee chair Ron Greeno, MD, FCCP, MHM. More than 150 hospitalists participated in training, 113 hospitalists visited Capitol Hill, and scores more had to be turned away. All told, hospitalists held 409 individual meetings with legislators and staff members.

“Quite frankly, if we’d have had the budget, we could have had another 100 to 150 people come,” Dr. Greeno says. “That’s how many people wanted to go.”

Dr. Greeno attributes the interest to two factors. One, having the annual meeting at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center, just outside Washington, D.C, makes the Hill trip a natural extension. Two, the current landscape of health-care reform has motivated many physicians to become more involved than they might otherwise be. One challenge of having so many first-timers making this year’s trip was making sure they were properly prepared. To hone the message, SHM gave the group a few hours of education by former legislative staffer Stephanie Vance of Advocacy Associates, a communications firm that helps organizations, such as medical societies, tailor their message to policymakers. Vance told hospitalists a personal visit with a constituent often becomes the most influential type of advocacy.

“That’s why it was easy to make an initial connection, because these staffers are from where I’m from, friends with people that I’m friends with,” Dr. Hunter says.

Unique Approach

SHM CEO Larry Wellikson, MD, SFHM, says the society tries to differentiate itself from other organizations through its grassroots approach to advocacy. More important, the society refrains from giving a long list of legislative requests that are self-serving.

“We’re someone they want to talk to because we’re not coming there to just say, ‘Here’s a power play for hospitalists,’” Dr. Wellikson says. “We come and try to provide solutions.”

To that end, this year’s lobbying effort was targeted to topics important both to HM and the health-care system:

• Repealing the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula for Medicare payments, specifically via the proposed Medicare Physician Payment Innovation Act of 2013 (H.R. 574);
• Solving the quagmire of observation status time not counting toward the required three consecutive overnights as an inpatient needed to qualify for Medicare benefits at a skilled nursing facility, by supporting the Improving Access to Medicare Coverage Act of 2013 (H.R. 1179, S. 569); and
• Getting the federal government to commit to providing $434 million in funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in fiscal 2014.

“The message that we’re sending resonated with the people we met with on both sides of the aisle,” Dr. Greeno says. “The SGR, for instance, they know there needs to be a fix. We want to serve as a resource for them as they start to figure out the answer to the question: What are we going to replace it with?

“What we want to do is make everybody on the Hill understand that we can be relied upon as a resource when they’re looking for solutions,” he says.

Focused on Follow-Up

And that’s where rank-and-filers, such as Dr. Hunter, have to take charge. So for his Hill Day visits, he tried to stand out. Everyone he met with got a lapel pin in the shape of a South Carolina state flag, which has become a popular fashion statement in recent years. And Scott also got a pin from Charleston Southern University, his alma mater. The gestures were small, but they served as icebreakers and reminders that Dr. Hunter and the people he met are bound by service to the residents of the Palmetto State.

Dr. Hunter also hopes the small token will be that little extra that makes him memorable enough that the next time a Congressional staffer has an SGR question, they’ll ask him and not a doctor from another specialty.

“I’m interested to see how much feedback I get back from them,” he says. “I can feed them all day long, but I don’t want to be that crazy guy bugging them. If they respond back to me, I can hopefully make more inroads.”

He certainly would if Dr. Greeno gets his way. Moving forward, SHM hopes to be able to rely more on local advocates pushing for reform than just a once-a-year major event and formal positions drafted by SHM’s staffers or the Public Policy Committee. Dr. Greeno says the physicians who participated in this year’s Hill trip are likely to find they will be asked to be the first cohort of a grassroots initiative meant to deliver the society’s message more routinely.

“These are not easy things to change because there are not easy solutions,” Dr. Greeno adds. “If you have just one meeting on the Hill, you’ll have no impact at all. You have to follow up. You have to do it consistently. And you have to have a consistent message. And we will.”

Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.

Alarms about our nation’s health-care costs have been sounding for well over a decade. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), spending on U.S. health care doubled between 1999 and 2011, climbing to $2.7 trillion from $1.3 trillion, and now represents 17.9% of the United States’ GDP.¹

“The medical care system is bankrupting the country,” Paul B. Ginsburg, PhD, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), based in Washington, D.C., says bluntly. A four-decade-long upward spending trend is “unsustainable,” he wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine with Chapin White, PhD, a senior health researcher at HSC.²

Recent reports suggest that rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs are rendering the price of health care untenable for the average consumer. A 2011 RAND Corp. study found that, for the average American family, the rate of increased costs for health care had outpaced growth in earnings from 1999 to 2009.³ And last year, for the first time, the cost of health care for a typical American family of four surpassed $20,000, the annual Milliman Medical Index reported.⁴

Should hospitalists be concerned, professionally and personally, about these trends? Absolutely, say hospitalist leaders who spoke with The Hospitalist. HM clinicians have much to contribute at both the macro level (addressing systemic causes of overutilization through quality improvement and other initiatives) and at the micro level, by understanding their personal contributions and by engaging patients and their families in shared decision-making.

But getting at and addressing the root causes of rising health-care costs, according to health-care policy analysts and veteran hospitalists, will require major shifts in thinking and processes.

Contributors to Rising Costs

It’s difficult to pinpoint the root causes of the recent surge in health-care costs. Victor Fuchs, emeritus professor of economics and health research and policy at Stanford University, points to the U.S.’ high administrative costs and complicated billing systems.⁵ A fragmented, nontransparent system for negotiating fees between insurers and providers also plays a role, as demonstrated in a Consumer Reports investigation into geographic variations in costs for common tests and procedures. A complete blood count might be as low as $15 or as high as $105; a colonoscopy ranges from $800 to $3,160.⁶

Bradley Flansbaum, DO, MPH, SFHM, an SHM Public Policy Committee member and AMA delegate, says rising costs are a provider-specific issue. He challenges colleagues to take an honest look at their own practice patterns to assess whether they’re contributing to overuse of resources (see “A Lesson in Change,”).

“The culture of practice has developed so that this is not going to change overnight,” says Dr. Flansbaum, director of hospitalist services at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. That’s because many physicians fail to view their own decisions as a problem. For example, says Dr. Flansbaum, “an oncologist may not identify a third round of chemotherapy as an embodiment of the problem, or a gastroenterologist might not embody the colonoscopy at Year Four instead of Year Five as the problem. We must come to grips with the usual mindset, look in the mirror, and admit, ‘Maybe we are part of the problem.’”

The culture of practice has developed so that this is not going to change overnight. An oncologist may not identify a third round of chemotherapy as an embodiment of the problem. We must come to grips with the usual mindset, look in the mirror, and admit, 'Maybe we are part of the problem.'

—Bradley Flansbaum, DO, MPH, SFHM

Potential Solutions

Hospitalists, intensivists, and ED clinicians are tasked with finding a balance between being prudent stewards of resources and staying within a comfort zone that promotes patient safety. SHM supports the goals of the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely campaign, which aims to reduce waste by curtailing duplicative and unnecessary care (see “Better Choices, Better Care,” March 2013). Also included in the campaign (www.ChoosingWisely.org) are the American College of Physicians’ recommendations against low-value testing (e.g. obtaining imaging studies in patients with nonspecific low back pain).

“Those recommendations are not going to solve our health spending problem,” says White, “but they are part of a broader move to give permission to clinicians, based on evidence, to follow more conservative practice patterns.”

Still, counters David I. Auerbach, PhD, a health economist at RAND in Boston and author of the RAND study, “there’s another value to these tests that the cost-effectiveness equations do not always consider, which is, they can bring peace of mind. We’re trying to nudge patients down the pathway that we think is best for them without rationing care. That’s a delicate balance.”

Dr. Flansbaum says SHM’s Public Policy Committee has discussed a variety of issues related to rising costs, although the group has not directly tackled advice in the form of a white paper. He suggests some ways that hospitalists can address cost savings:

• Involve patients in shared decision-making, and discuss the evidence against unnecessary testing;
• Utilize generic medications on discharge, when available, especially if patients are uninsured or have limited drug coverage with their insurance plans;
• Use palliative care whenever appropriate; and
• Adhere to transitional-care standards.

On the macro level, HM has “always been the specialty invited to champion the important discussion relating to resource utilization, and the evidence-based medicine driving that resource utilization,” says Christopher Frost, MD, FHM, medical director of hospital medicine at the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) in Nashville, Tenn. He points to SHM’s leadership with Project BOOST (www.hospitalmedicine.org/boost) as one example of addressing the utilization of resources in caring for older adults (see “Resources for Improving Transitions in Care,”).

What else can hospitalists do? Going forward, says Dan Fuller, president and co-founder of IN Compass Health in Alpharetta, Ga., it might be a good idea for the SHM Practice Analysis Committee, of which he’s a member, to look at its possible role in the issue.

We need the time to make these calls [to PCPs], to sit down with families. This adds value to our health system and to society at large.

—Dr. Frederickson

Embrace Reality

Whatever the downstream developments around the Affordable Care Act, Dr. Ginsburg is “confident” that Medicare policies will continue in a direction of reduced reimbursements. Thomas Frederickson, MD, FACP, FHM, MBA, medical director of the hospital medicine service at Alegent Health in Omaha, Neb., agrees with such an assessment. He also believes that hospitalists are in a prime position to improve care delivery at less cost. To do so, though, requires deliberate partnership-building with outpatient providers to better bridge the transitions of care.

At his institution, Dr. Frederickson says, hospitalists invite themselves to primary-care physicians’ (PCP) meetings. This facilitates rapport so that calls to PCPs at discharge not only communicate essential clinical information, but also build confidence in the hospitalists’ care of their patients. As hospitalists demonstrate value, they must intentionally put metrics in place so that administrators appreciate the need to keep the census at a certain level, Dr. Frederickson says.

“We need the time to make these calls, to sit down with families,” he says. “This adds value to our health system and to society at large.”

SHM does a good job, says Dr. Frost, of being part of the conversation as the hospital C-suite focuses more on episodes of care.

“The intensity of that discussion is getting dialed up and will be driven more by government and the payors,” he adds. The challenge going forward will be to bridge those arenas just outside the acute episode of care, where hospitalists have ownership of processes, to those where they do not have as much control. If payors apply broader definitions to the episode of care, Dr. Frost says, hospitalists might be “invited to play an increasing role, that of ‘transitionist.’”

And in that context, he says, hospitalists need to look at length of stay with a new lens.

Partnership-building will become more important as the definition of “episode of care” expands beyond the hospital stay to the post-acute setting.

“Including post-acute care in the episode of care is a core aspect of the whole” value-based purchasing approach, Dr. Ginsburg says. “Hospitals [and hospitalists] will be wise to opt for the model with the greatest potential to reduce costs, particularly costs incurred by other providers.”

Gretchen Henkel is a freelance writer in California.

References

1. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. National health expenditures 2011 highlights. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website. Available at: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/highlights.pdf. Accessed May 6, 2013. costs how much? Consumer Reports website. Available at: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/ 2012/07/that-ct-scan-costs-how-much/index.htm. Accessed Aug. 2, 2012.
2. White C, Ginsburg PB. Slower growth in Medicare spending—is this the new normal? N Engl J Med. 2012;366(12):1073-1075.
3. Auerbach DI, Kellermann AL. A decade of health care cost growth has wiped out real income gains for an average US family. Health Aff (Millwood). 2011;30(9):1630-1636.
4. Milliman Inc. 2012 Milliman Medical Index. Milliman Inc. website. Available at: http://publications.milliman.com/periodicals/mmi/pdfs/milliman-medical-index-2012.pdf. Accessed Aug. 1, 2012.
5. Kolata G. Knotty challenges in health care costs. The New York Times website. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/health/policy/an-interview-with-victor-fuchs-on-health-care-costs.html. Accessed March 8, 2012.
6. Consumer Reports. That CT scan costs how much? Consumer Reports website. Available at: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/ 2012/07/that-ct-scan-costs-how-much/index.htm.

Alarms about our nation’s health-care costs have been sounding for well over a decade. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), spending on U.S. health care doubled between 1999 and 2011, climbing to $2.7 trillion from $1.3 trillion, and now represents 17.9% of the United States’ GDP.¹

“The medical care system is bankrupting the country,” Paul B. Ginsburg, PhD, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), based in Washington, D.C., says bluntly. A four-decade-long upward spending trend is “unsustainable,” he wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine with Chapin White, PhD, a senior health researcher at HSC.²

Recent reports suggest that rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs are rendering the price of health care untenable for the average consumer. A 2011 RAND Corp. study found that, for the average American family, the rate of increased costs for health care had outpaced growth in earnings from 1999 to 2009.³ And last year, for the first time, the cost of health care for a typical American family of four surpassed $20,000, the annual Milliman Medical Index reported.⁴

Should hospitalists be concerned, professionally and personally, about these trends? Absolutely, say hospitalist leaders who spoke with The Hospitalist. HM clinicians have much to contribute at both the macro level (addressing systemic causes of overutilization through quality improvement and other initiatives) and at the micro level, by understanding their personal contributions and by engaging patients and their families in shared decision-making.

But getting at and addressing the root causes of rising health-care costs, according to health-care policy analysts and veteran hospitalists, will require major shifts in thinking and processes.

Contributors to Rising Costs

It’s difficult to pinpoint the root causes of the recent surge in health-care costs. Victor Fuchs, emeritus professor of economics and health research and policy at Stanford University, points to the U.S.’ high administrative costs and complicated billing systems.⁵ A fragmented, nontransparent system for negotiating fees between insurers and providers also plays a role, as demonstrated in a Consumer Reports investigation into geographic variations in costs for common tests and procedures. A complete blood count might be as low as $15 or as high as $105; a colonoscopy ranges from $800 to $3,160.⁶

Bradley Flansbaum, DO, MPH, SFHM, an SHM Public Policy Committee member and AMA delegate, says rising costs are a provider-specific issue. He challenges colleagues to take an honest look at their own practice patterns to assess whether they’re contributing to overuse of resources (see “A Lesson in Change,”).

“The culture of practice has developed so that this is not going to change overnight,” says Dr. Flansbaum, director of hospitalist services at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. That’s because many physicians fail to view their own decisions as a problem. For example, says Dr. Flansbaum, “an oncologist may not identify a third round of chemotherapy as an embodiment of the problem, or a gastroenterologist might not embody the colonoscopy at Year Four instead of Year Five as the problem. We must come to grips with the usual mindset, look in the mirror, and admit, ‘Maybe we are part of the problem.’”

The culture of practice has developed so that this is not going to change overnight. An oncologist may not identify a third round of chemotherapy as an embodiment of the problem. We must come to grips with the usual mindset, look in the mirror, and admit, 'Maybe we are part of the problem.'

—Bradley Flansbaum, DO, MPH, SFHM

Potential Solutions

Hospitalists, intensivists, and ED clinicians are tasked with finding a balance between being prudent stewards of resources and staying within a comfort zone that promotes patient safety. SHM supports the goals of the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely campaign, which aims to reduce waste by curtailing duplicative and unnecessary care (see “Better Choices, Better Care,” March 2013). Also included in the campaign (www.ChoosingWisely.org) are the American College of Physicians’ recommendations against low-value testing (e.g. obtaining imaging studies in patients with nonspecific low back pain).

“Those recommendations are not going to solve our health spending problem,” says White, “but they are part of a broader move to give permission to clinicians, based on evidence, to follow more conservative practice patterns.”

Still, counters David I. Auerbach, PhD, a health economist at RAND in Boston and author of the RAND study, “there’s another value to these tests that the cost-effectiveness equations do not always consider, which is, they can bring peace of mind. We’re trying to nudge patients down the pathway that we think is best for them without rationing care. That’s a delicate balance.”

Dr. Flansbaum says SHM’s Public Policy Committee has discussed a variety of issues related to rising costs, although the group has not directly tackled advice in the form of a white paper. He suggests some ways that hospitalists can address cost savings:

• Involve patients in shared decision-making, and discuss the evidence against unnecessary testing;
• Utilize generic medications on discharge, when available, especially if patients are uninsured or have limited drug coverage with their insurance plans;
• Use palliative care whenever appropriate; and
• Adhere to transitional-care standards.

On the macro level, HM has “always been the specialty invited to champion the important discussion relating to resource utilization, and the evidence-based medicine driving that resource utilization,” says Christopher Frost, MD, FHM, medical director of hospital medicine at the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) in Nashville, Tenn. He points to SHM’s leadership with Project BOOST (www.hospitalmedicine.org/boost) as one example of addressing the utilization of resources in caring for older adults (see “Resources for Improving Transitions in Care,”).

What else can hospitalists do? Going forward, says Dan Fuller, president and co-founder of IN Compass Health in Alpharetta, Ga., it might be a good idea for the SHM Practice Analysis Committee, of which he’s a member, to look at its possible role in the issue.

We need the time to make these calls [to PCPs], to sit down with families. This adds value to our health system and to society at large.

—Dr. Frederickson

Embrace Reality

Whatever the downstream developments around the Affordable Care Act, Dr. Ginsburg is “confident” that Medicare policies will continue in a direction of reduced reimbursements. Thomas Frederickson, MD, FACP, FHM, MBA, medical director of the hospital medicine service at Alegent Health in Omaha, Neb., agrees with such an assessment. He also believes that hospitalists are in a prime position to improve care delivery at less cost. To do so, though, requires deliberate partnership-building with outpatient providers to better bridge the transitions of care.

At his institution, Dr. Frederickson says, hospitalists invite themselves to primary-care physicians’ (PCP) meetings. This facilitates rapport so that calls to PCPs at discharge not only communicate essential clinical information, but also build confidence in the hospitalists’ care of their patients. As hospitalists demonstrate value, they must intentionally put metrics in place so that administrators appreciate the need to keep the census at a certain level, Dr. Frederickson says.

“We need the time to make these calls, to sit down with families,” he says. “This adds value to our health system and to society at large.”

SHM does a good job, says Dr. Frost, of being part of the conversation as the hospital C-suite focuses more on episodes of care.

“The intensity of that discussion is getting dialed up and will be driven more by government and the payors,” he adds. The challenge going forward will be to bridge those arenas just outside the acute episode of care, where hospitalists have ownership of processes, to those where they do not have as much control. If payors apply broader definitions to the episode of care, Dr. Frost says, hospitalists might be “invited to play an increasing role, that of ‘transitionist.’”

And in that context, he says, hospitalists need to look at length of stay with a new lens.

Partnership-building will become more important as the definition of “episode of care” expands beyond the hospital stay to the post-acute setting.

“Including post-acute care in the episode of care is a core aspect of the whole” value-based purchasing approach, Dr. Ginsburg says. “Hospitals [and hospitalists] will be wise to opt for the model with the greatest potential to reduce costs, particularly costs incurred by other providers.”

Gretchen Henkel is a freelance writer in California.

References

1. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. National health expenditures 2011 highlights. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website. Available at: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/highlights.pdf. Accessed May 6, 2013. costs how much? Consumer Reports website. Available at: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/ 2012/07/that-ct-scan-costs-how-much/index.htm. Accessed Aug. 2, 2012.
2. White C, Ginsburg PB. Slower growth in Medicare spending—is this the new normal? N Engl J Med. 2012;366(12):1073-1075.
3. Auerbach DI, Kellermann AL. A decade of health care cost growth has wiped out real income gains for an average US family. Health Aff (Millwood). 2011;30(9):1630-1636.
4. Milliman Inc. 2012 Milliman Medical Index. Milliman Inc. website. Available at: http://publications.milliman.com/periodicals/mmi/pdfs/milliman-medical-index-2012.pdf. Accessed Aug. 1, 2012.
5. Kolata G. Knotty challenges in health care costs. The New York Times website. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/health/policy/an-interview-with-victor-fuchs-on-health-care-costs.html. Accessed March 8, 2012.
6. Consumer Reports. That CT scan costs how much? Consumer Reports website. Available at: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/ 2012/07/that-ct-scan-costs-how-much/index.htm.

Alarms about our nation’s health-care costs have been sounding for well over a decade. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), spending on U.S. health care doubled between 1999 and 2011, climbing to $2.7 trillion from $1.3 trillion, and now represents 17.9% of the United States’ GDP.¹

“The medical care system is bankrupting the country,” Paul B. Ginsburg, PhD, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC), based in Washington, D.C., says bluntly. A four-decade-long upward spending trend is “unsustainable,” he wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine with Chapin White, PhD, a senior health researcher at HSC.²

Recent reports suggest that rising premiums and out-of-pocket costs are rendering the price of health care untenable for the average consumer. A 2011 RAND Corp. study found that, for the average American family, the rate of increased costs for health care had outpaced growth in earnings from 1999 to 2009.³ And last year, for the first time, the cost of health care for a typical American family of four surpassed $20,000, the annual Milliman Medical Index reported.⁴

Should hospitalists be concerned, professionally and personally, about these trends? Absolutely, say hospitalist leaders who spoke with The Hospitalist. HM clinicians have much to contribute at both the macro level (addressing systemic causes of overutilization through quality improvement and other initiatives) and at the micro level, by understanding their personal contributions and by engaging patients and their families in shared decision-making.

But getting at and addressing the root causes of rising health-care costs, according to health-care policy analysts and veteran hospitalists, will require major shifts in thinking and processes.

Contributors to Rising Costs

It’s difficult to pinpoint the root causes of the recent surge in health-care costs. Victor Fuchs, emeritus professor of economics and health research and policy at Stanford University, points to the U.S.’ high administrative costs and complicated billing systems.⁵ A fragmented, nontransparent system for negotiating fees between insurers and providers also plays a role, as demonstrated in a Consumer Reports investigation into geographic variations in costs for common tests and procedures. A complete blood count might be as low as $15 or as high as $105; a colonoscopy ranges from $800 to $3,160.⁶

Bradley Flansbaum, DO, MPH, SFHM, an SHM Public Policy Committee member and AMA delegate, says rising costs are a provider-specific issue. He challenges colleagues to take an honest look at their own practice patterns to assess whether they’re contributing to overuse of resources (see “A Lesson in Change,”).

“The culture of practice has developed so that this is not going to change overnight,” says Dr. Flansbaum, director of hospitalist services at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. That’s because many physicians fail to view their own decisions as a problem. For example, says Dr. Flansbaum, “an oncologist may not identify a third round of chemotherapy as an embodiment of the problem, or a gastroenterologist might not embody the colonoscopy at Year Four instead of Year Five as the problem. We must come to grips with the usual mindset, look in the mirror, and admit, ‘Maybe we are part of the problem.’”

The culture of practice has developed so that this is not going to change overnight. An oncologist may not identify a third round of chemotherapy as an embodiment of the problem. We must come to grips with the usual mindset, look in the mirror, and admit, 'Maybe we are part of the problem.'

—Bradley Flansbaum, DO, MPH, SFHM

Potential Solutions

Hospitalists, intensivists, and ED clinicians are tasked with finding a balance between being prudent stewards of resources and staying within a comfort zone that promotes patient safety. SHM supports the goals of the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely campaign, which aims to reduce waste by curtailing duplicative and unnecessary care (see “Better Choices, Better Care,” March 2013). Also included in the campaign (www.ChoosingWisely.org) are the American College of Physicians’ recommendations against low-value testing (e.g. obtaining imaging studies in patients with nonspecific low back pain).

“Those recommendations are not going to solve our health spending problem,” says White, “but they are part of a broader move to give permission to clinicians, based on evidence, to follow more conservative practice patterns.”

Still, counters David I. Auerbach, PhD, a health economist at RAND in Boston and author of the RAND study, “there’s another value to these tests that the cost-effectiveness equations do not always consider, which is, they can bring peace of mind. We’re trying to nudge patients down the pathway that we think is best for them without rationing care. That’s a delicate balance.”

Dr. Flansbaum says SHM’s Public Policy Committee has discussed a variety of issues related to rising costs, although the group has not directly tackled advice in the form of a white paper. He suggests some ways that hospitalists can address cost savings:

• Involve patients in shared decision-making, and discuss the evidence against unnecessary testing;
• Utilize generic medications on discharge, when available, especially if patients are uninsured or have limited drug coverage with their insurance plans;
• Use palliative care whenever appropriate; and
• Adhere to transitional-care standards.

On the macro level, HM has “always been the specialty invited to champion the important discussion relating to resource utilization, and the evidence-based medicine driving that resource utilization,” says Christopher Frost, MD, FHM, medical director of hospital medicine at the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) in Nashville, Tenn. He points to SHM’s leadership with Project BOOST (www.hospitalmedicine.org/boost) as one example of addressing the utilization of resources in caring for older adults (see “Resources for Improving Transitions in Care,”).

What else can hospitalists do? Going forward, says Dan Fuller, president and co-founder of IN Compass Health in Alpharetta, Ga., it might be a good idea for the SHM Practice Analysis Committee, of which he’s a member, to look at its possible role in the issue.

We need the time to make these calls [to PCPs], to sit down with families. This adds value to our health system and to society at large.

—Dr. Frederickson

Embrace Reality

Whatever the downstream developments around the Affordable Care Act, Dr. Ginsburg is “confident” that Medicare policies will continue in a direction of reduced reimbursements. Thomas Frederickson, MD, FACP, FHM, MBA, medical director of the hospital medicine service at Alegent Health in Omaha, Neb., agrees with such an assessment. He also believes that hospitalists are in a prime position to improve care delivery at less cost. To do so, though, requires deliberate partnership-building with outpatient providers to better bridge the transitions of care.

At his institution, Dr. Frederickson says, hospitalists invite themselves to primary-care physicians’ (PCP) meetings. This facilitates rapport so that calls to PCPs at discharge not only communicate essential clinical information, but also build confidence in the hospitalists’ care of their patients. As hospitalists demonstrate value, they must intentionally put metrics in place so that administrators appreciate the need to keep the census at a certain level, Dr. Frederickson says.

“We need the time to make these calls, to sit down with families,” he says. “This adds value to our health system and to society at large.”

SHM does a good job, says Dr. Frost, of being part of the conversation as the hospital C-suite focuses more on episodes of care.

“The intensity of that discussion is getting dialed up and will be driven more by government and the payors,” he adds. The challenge going forward will be to bridge those arenas just outside the acute episode of care, where hospitalists have ownership of processes, to those where they do not have as much control. If payors apply broader definitions to the episode of care, Dr. Frost says, hospitalists might be “invited to play an increasing role, that of ‘transitionist.’”

And in that context, he says, hospitalists need to look at length of stay with a new lens.

Partnership-building will become more important as the definition of “episode of care” expands beyond the hospital stay to the post-acute setting.

“Including post-acute care in the episode of care is a core aspect of the whole” value-based purchasing approach, Dr. Ginsburg says. “Hospitals [and hospitalists] will be wise to opt for the model with the greatest potential to reduce costs, particularly costs incurred by other providers.”

Gretchen Henkel is a freelance writer in California.

References

1. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. National health expenditures 2011 highlights. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services website. Available at: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/highlights.pdf. Accessed May 6, 2013. costs how much? Consumer Reports website. Available at: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/ 2012/07/that-ct-scan-costs-how-much/index.htm. Accessed Aug. 2, 2012.
2. White C, Ginsburg PB. Slower growth in Medicare spending—is this the new normal? N Engl J Med. 2012;366(12):1073-1075.
3. Auerbach DI, Kellermann AL. A decade of health care cost growth has wiped out real income gains for an average US family. Health Aff (Millwood). 2011;30(9):1630-1636.
4. Milliman Inc. 2012 Milliman Medical Index. Milliman Inc. website. Available at: http://publications.milliman.com/periodicals/mmi/pdfs/milliman-medical-index-2012.pdf. Accessed Aug. 1, 2012.
5. Kolata G. Knotty challenges in health care costs. The New York Times website. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/health/policy/an-interview-with-victor-fuchs-on-health-care-costs.html. Accessed March 8, 2012.
6. Consumer Reports. That CT scan costs how much? Consumer Reports website. Available at: http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/ 2012/07/that-ct-scan-costs-how-much/index.htm.

Hospitalist Roman Cortez, MD, who helps run Inpatient Medical Service in Kailua, Hawaii, is up for recertification of his internal-medicine boards in 2015. So after attending—and loving—his first SHM annual meeting last year in San Diego, he couldn’t think of a better place to earn credits for the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) than HM13 in National Harbor, Md.

“It’s more motivational to sit through a seminar than to do it on your own, obviously,” Dr. Cortez says. “It’s like going to the gym. Nobody wants to work out at home, but if you go to the gym, you’re more motivated because you look around and your peers are working out. It’s the same thing with your mind.”

Working on one’s mind and career development is a major aim of SHMa’s annual meeting. From credit-worthy CME pre-courses to the daylong MOC class to the newest class of Fellows, Senior Fellows, and Masters of Hospital Medicine, clinicians like Dr. Cortez can use the yearly gathering as a chance to benchmark their professional progress.

Dr. Cortez, one of three partners who launched their HM group about five years ago, says having tutors, a regimented curricula via the pre-course, and a packed room of like-minded physicians helps hospitalists who are looking for one-stop shopping rather than working on Practice Improvement Modules (PIMs) in a room at their hospital or at home while balancing domestic duties.

“It seems like SHM has streamlined it for us,” Dr. Cortez says.

Ethan Cumbler, MD, FACP, of the University of Colorado at Denver believes the MOC courses are working. Dr. Cumbler is faculty for the pre-course and says there has been a noticeable uptick in how comfortable physicians at the meeting are with quality-improvement (QI) terminology and concepts.

“I think that over the years, the audiences that we’re seeing are savvier as to the process,” he adds. “I remember the first year that the quality-improvement module went out, people were shocked.

“I see clear differences between now and where we were three, four years ago,” he says.

Moving forward, Dr. Cumbler believes that ABIM and the people who help compile PIMs and test questions have to continue to evolve with physicians.

“What we have to figure out how to do as teachers of the Maintenance of Certification modules is how to make this engaging, interesting, and relevant,” he says. And “the people who are writing these questions have to take those same considerations into account. If you are teaching things which are relevant and important, then smart people will learn them.”

New Recruits, New Paths

Larry Spratling, MD, chief medical officer at Banner Baywood Medical Center in Mesa, Ariz., expects to see even more changes to the career trajectory of hospitalists. A pulmonary-disease specialist by training, he believes that as the payment systems are reformed to reward the quality of treatment, many more hospitalists will find their careers outside the walls of institutions.

Theoretically, improved outcomes that reduce readmissions would equate to fewer overall patients, potentially requiring fewer hospitalists in the future. The recent proliferation of hospitalists in long-term acute-care hospitals (LTACs), rehabilitation centers, skilled-nursing facilities (SNFs), and other facilities likely will continue that trend, as HM practitioners adapt to the needs of what Dr. Spratling calls “hospital space in a new system.” Dr. Spratling goes as far as to wonder if the specialty’s skill set might even presage a new name, perhaps something like acute-care medical specialists.

“The acute-care management skills that they have in the hospital, we can use them in these other sites of care,” he adds. “They aren’t just limited to the hospital anymore.”

Another angle of career development is career inception, so newly minted by SHM president Eric Howell, MD, SFHM. In fact, Dr. Howell made recruitment of the next generation of hospitalists and HM leaders a major plank of his one-year term. Of the society’s 12,000 members, just 500 are medical students and house staff members. He’d like to triple that figure by HM14.

He believes that the same professional and personal factors that have swelled the specialty’s ranks to some 40,000 practitioners will appeal to younger physicians. On the clinical side, that includes a focus on QI at a time when health care is being pushed to be better and a chance to be a leader in the hospital of the future. On a positive note, Dr. Howell, chief of hospital medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, says hospitalists continue to see their compensation rise along with good work-life balance.

“For our specialty to be just as powerful, and just as important, and thrive just as much in the next 16 years as it has in the past 16 years, we are going to need high-quality recruits—and a lot of them,” Dr. Howell says.

Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.

Hospitalist Roman Cortez, MD, who helps run Inpatient Medical Service in Kailua, Hawaii, is up for recertification of his internal-medicine boards in 2015. So after attending—and loving—his first SHM annual meeting last year in San Diego, he couldn’t think of a better place to earn credits for the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) than HM13 in National Harbor, Md.

“It’s more motivational to sit through a seminar than to do it on your own, obviously,” Dr. Cortez says. “It’s like going to the gym. Nobody wants to work out at home, but if you go to the gym, you’re more motivated because you look around and your peers are working out. It’s the same thing with your mind.”

Working on one’s mind and career development is a major aim of SHMa’s annual meeting. From credit-worthy CME pre-courses to the daylong MOC class to the newest class of Fellows, Senior Fellows, and Masters of Hospital Medicine, clinicians like Dr. Cortez can use the yearly gathering as a chance to benchmark their professional progress.

Dr. Cortez, one of three partners who launched their HM group about five years ago, says having tutors, a regimented curricula via the pre-course, and a packed room of like-minded physicians helps hospitalists who are looking for one-stop shopping rather than working on Practice Improvement Modules (PIMs) in a room at their hospital or at home while balancing domestic duties.

“It seems like SHM has streamlined it for us,” Dr. Cortez says.

Ethan Cumbler, MD, FACP, of the University of Colorado at Denver believes the MOC courses are working. Dr. Cumbler is faculty for the pre-course and says there has been a noticeable uptick in how comfortable physicians at the meeting are with quality-improvement (QI) terminology and concepts.

“I think that over the years, the audiences that we’re seeing are savvier as to the process,” he adds. “I remember the first year that the quality-improvement module went out, people were shocked.

“I see clear differences between now and where we were three, four years ago,” he says.

Moving forward, Dr. Cumbler believes that ABIM and the people who help compile PIMs and test questions have to continue to evolve with physicians.

“What we have to figure out how to do as teachers of the Maintenance of Certification modules is how to make this engaging, interesting, and relevant,” he says. And “the people who are writing these questions have to take those same considerations into account. If you are teaching things which are relevant and important, then smart people will learn them.”

New Recruits, New Paths

Larry Spratling, MD, chief medical officer at Banner Baywood Medical Center in Mesa, Ariz., expects to see even more changes to the career trajectory of hospitalists. A pulmonary-disease specialist by training, he believes that as the payment systems are reformed to reward the quality of treatment, many more hospitalists will find their careers outside the walls of institutions.

Theoretically, improved outcomes that reduce readmissions would equate to fewer overall patients, potentially requiring fewer hospitalists in the future. The recent proliferation of hospitalists in long-term acute-care hospitals (LTACs), rehabilitation centers, skilled-nursing facilities (SNFs), and other facilities likely will continue that trend, as HM practitioners adapt to the needs of what Dr. Spratling calls “hospital space in a new system.” Dr. Spratling goes as far as to wonder if the specialty’s skill set might even presage a new name, perhaps something like acute-care medical specialists.

“The acute-care management skills that they have in the hospital, we can use them in these other sites of care,” he adds. “They aren’t just limited to the hospital anymore.”

Another angle of career development is career inception, so newly minted by SHM president Eric Howell, MD, SFHM. In fact, Dr. Howell made recruitment of the next generation of hospitalists and HM leaders a major plank of his one-year term. Of the society’s 12,000 members, just 500 are medical students and house staff members. He’d like to triple that figure by HM14.

He believes that the same professional and personal factors that have swelled the specialty’s ranks to some 40,000 practitioners will appeal to younger physicians. On the clinical side, that includes a focus on QI at a time when health care is being pushed to be better and a chance to be a leader in the hospital of the future. On a positive note, Dr. Howell, chief of hospital medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, says hospitalists continue to see their compensation rise along with good work-life balance.

“For our specialty to be just as powerful, and just as important, and thrive just as much in the next 16 years as it has in the past 16 years, we are going to need high-quality recruits—and a lot of them,” Dr. Howell says.

Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.

Hospitalist Roman Cortez, MD, who helps run Inpatient Medical Service in Kailua, Hawaii, is up for recertification of his internal-medicine boards in 2015. So after attending—and loving—his first SHM annual meeting last year in San Diego, he couldn’t think of a better place to earn credits for the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) than HM13 in National Harbor, Md.

“It’s more motivational to sit through a seminar than to do it on your own, obviously,” Dr. Cortez says. “It’s like going to the gym. Nobody wants to work out at home, but if you go to the gym, you’re more motivated because you look around and your peers are working out. It’s the same thing with your mind.”

Working on one’s mind and career development is a major aim of SHMa’s annual meeting. From credit-worthy CME pre-courses to the daylong MOC class to the newest class of Fellows, Senior Fellows, and Masters of Hospital Medicine, clinicians like Dr. Cortez can use the yearly gathering as a chance to benchmark their professional progress.

Dr. Cortez, one of three partners who launched their HM group about five years ago, says having tutors, a regimented curricula via the pre-course, and a packed room of like-minded physicians helps hospitalists who are looking for one-stop shopping rather than working on Practice Improvement Modules (PIMs) in a room at their hospital or at home while balancing domestic duties.

“It seems like SHM has streamlined it for us,” Dr. Cortez says.

Ethan Cumbler, MD, FACP, of the University of Colorado at Denver believes the MOC courses are working. Dr. Cumbler is faculty for the pre-course and says there has been a noticeable uptick in how comfortable physicians at the meeting are with quality-improvement (QI) terminology and concepts.

“I think that over the years, the audiences that we’re seeing are savvier as to the process,” he adds. “I remember the first year that the quality-improvement module went out, people were shocked.

“I see clear differences between now and where we were three, four years ago,” he says.

Moving forward, Dr. Cumbler believes that ABIM and the people who help compile PIMs and test questions have to continue to evolve with physicians.

“What we have to figure out how to do as teachers of the Maintenance of Certification modules is how to make this engaging, interesting, and relevant,” he says. And “the people who are writing these questions have to take those same considerations into account. If you are teaching things which are relevant and important, then smart people will learn them.”

New Recruits, New Paths

Larry Spratling, MD, chief medical officer at Banner Baywood Medical Center in Mesa, Ariz., expects to see even more changes to the career trajectory of hospitalists. A pulmonary-disease specialist by training, he believes that as the payment systems are reformed to reward the quality of treatment, many more hospitalists will find their careers outside the walls of institutions.

Theoretically, improved outcomes that reduce readmissions would equate to fewer overall patients, potentially requiring fewer hospitalists in the future. The recent proliferation of hospitalists in long-term acute-care hospitals (LTACs), rehabilitation centers, skilled-nursing facilities (SNFs), and other facilities likely will continue that trend, as HM practitioners adapt to the needs of what Dr. Spratling calls “hospital space in a new system.” Dr. Spratling goes as far as to wonder if the specialty’s skill set might even presage a new name, perhaps something like acute-care medical specialists.

“The acute-care management skills that they have in the hospital, we can use them in these other sites of care,” he adds. “They aren’t just limited to the hospital anymore.”

Another angle of career development is career inception, so newly minted by SHM president Eric Howell, MD, SFHM. In fact, Dr. Howell made recruitment of the next generation of hospitalists and HM leaders a major plank of his one-year term. Of the society’s 12,000 members, just 500 are medical students and house staff members. He’d like to triple that figure by HM14.

He believes that the same professional and personal factors that have swelled the specialty’s ranks to some 40,000 practitioners will appeal to younger physicians. On the clinical side, that includes a focus on QI at a time when health care is being pushed to be better and a chance to be a leader in the hospital of the future. On a positive note, Dr. Howell, chief of hospital medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, says hospitalists continue to see their compensation rise along with good work-life balance.

“For our specialty to be just as powerful, and just as important, and thrive just as much in the next 16 years as it has in the past 16 years, we are going to need high-quality recruits—and a lot of them,” Dr. Howell says.

Richard Quinn is a freelance writer in New Jersey.

After wrapping up the SHM annual meeting, I was left with a sense of security about hospital medicine’s future. This security I can summarize in a single word: leadership. SHM has long had a strong set of leaders, which are needed now more than ever. With explosive expansion in volume and scope, hospitalist practice is going to require tireless leadership in the coming years and decades to ensure our trajectory is strategic and viable.

The Science

Wikipedia describes leadership as “a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.” Notice a few key words in that definition? “Process,” which implies that it takes time, patience, and tenacity. It is not something that automatically happens without any time or effort. Also notice the word “influence,” which does not include “power” or “authority” or “pay grade”—all terms that are entirely overused and misused in the medical industry.

There is a wealth of literature describing what leadership is and what it takes to be a leader. There are an abundance of theories on what traits and characteristics make up a good leader, and an equal abundance of theories on how great leaders evolve. Some subscribe to the inherited theory, in which genetic makeup will at least partially dictate whether you will be a “natural-born” a leader. Others subscribe to the belief that leadership is more situational, whereby leaders are effective in some situations but ineffective in others. Still others believe leaders emerge as a mixture of nature and nurture, that most good leaders can lead in a variety of climates and situations, but that a perfect leadership situation might not emerge for any one leader. For other leaders, a perfect situational opportunity might emerge that suits their leadership style, and transformational change can occur under their direction.

The science of leadership has found that some personal traits are more commonly associated with leaders than nonleaders, including extraversion, self-efficacy, conscientiousness, intelligence, and openness to experience. However, absence of these characteristics does not guarantee a hopeless leadership void; equally true, the presence of them does not guarantee good leadership.

The Art

So one can go on for the length of an encyclopedia about the science of leadership, but what about the art of leadership? The ability of a leader to “read the audience,” to “take the pulse” of their staff, to strategize their next foray into new territory, or to say no to a new (seemingly exciting) opportunity. It is the art of leadership that is much more intriguing. I have had the good fortune of seeing a variety of incredible leaders at work, both within and outside of SHM, including their artful mastery of difficult situations.

There were plenty of these artful masters exemplified over the course of the three-day meeting worthy of mention. Three outgoing board members have long led the society down many strategic pathways with brilliance and ease. Lakshmi Halasyamani is wise, kind, and even-keeled. Eric Siegal is sharp-minded, sharp-witted, and sharp-tongued. Joe Li is authentic, energetic, and conscientious. Three oncoming members will bring vast experience and collective wisdom to the SHM board—Brad Sharpe, Patrick Torcson, and Howard Epstein.

In the brief session celebrating the past presidents, I was struck by the number of impressive names and faces who all have gone on to do an array of other jobs. Together, they represent a collective footprint of impressive magnitude. As past president Shaun Frost gave his thoughtful exit speech, and new president Eric Howell gave his lively, energetic, and humorous entry speech, I was reassured that we indeed are in good hands, with a foothold of grounded past leaders, and a wealth of talent on the launching board. Moreover, the introduction of three new Masters in Hospital Medicine—Scott Flanders, Jeff Wiese, and David Meltzer—adds to the collective wisdom and talent of SHM.

We were blessed at the meeting by the presence of other incredible leaders in health care, including Patrick Conway and David Feinberg. Dr. Conway, the CMO of Medicare, is a service-minded colleague determined to make CMS more transparent, easier to traverse, and more aligned with what its recipients really need. Dr. Feinberg is a genuinely compassionate physician who has transformed UCLA medical center from a Motel 6 to a Ritz-Carlton in customer service. I have seen him speak before and had quite a bit of respect for him to begin with, but to watch how he handled a flock of unwieldy and uninvited guests on the stage was more than what anyone could expect from a great leader.

The Art of the Science

As we continue this unwieldy and unpredictable journey that we call health care and hospital medicine, the need for effective leadership within the industry will continue to increase. And there is little need to argue about whether leaders are naturally born, because there are more leaders needed than there are natural-born. So either way, many of us have to figure out how to be leaders, whether of a small program, a newly formed group, or a large conglomerate. And whether your contribution is large or small, it will be a contribution nonetheless.

Just as Mother Teresa was once presented with a statement from a reporter about how her care for the poor and neglected was just a “drop in the bucket” on combating poverty and dispassion. She paused and agreed: “Yes, it is just a drop in the bucket but it’s my drop.”

Just as Dr. Feinberg recounted when he was first offered the CEO position at UCLA, as an interim and unlikely candidate, he didn’t know what to do, so he just started doing what he knew how to do best. He just started walking around the hospital seeing patients, listening, visiting, saying “hello,” and giving out his business cards (his drop in the bucket). He wasn’t trying to do anything terribly innovative or strategic at the time—at least, not that he admits to. And anyone who watches Larry Wellikson work a boardroom or a ballroom can learn something about the art of leadership.

So think of leadership not as a secret sauce, or set of skills that can only be relegated to those enshrined with the DNA of a Kennedy or an MBA from an Ivy League school. It is a willingness to try to get some drops in some buckets, and lead people in a common direction. It is about being unambiguously committed and completely authentic, with a little science, and a lot of art.

Dr. Scheurer is a hospitalist and chief quality officer at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. She is physician editor of The Hospitalist. Email her at [email protected].

After wrapping up the SHM annual meeting, I was left with a sense of security about hospital medicine’s future. This security I can summarize in a single word: leadership. SHM has long had a strong set of leaders, which are needed now more than ever. With explosive expansion in volume and scope, hospitalist practice is going to require tireless leadership in the coming years and decades to ensure our trajectory is strategic and viable.

The Science

Wikipedia describes leadership as “a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.” Notice a few key words in that definition? “Process,” which implies that it takes time, patience, and tenacity. It is not something that automatically happens without any time or effort. Also notice the word “influence,” which does not include “power” or “authority” or “pay grade”—all terms that are entirely overused and misused in the medical industry.

There is a wealth of literature describing what leadership is and what it takes to be a leader. There are an abundance of theories on what traits and characteristics make up a good leader, and an equal abundance of theories on how great leaders evolve. Some subscribe to the inherited theory, in which genetic makeup will at least partially dictate whether you will be a “natural-born” a leader. Others subscribe to the belief that leadership is more situational, whereby leaders are effective in some situations but ineffective in others. Still others believe leaders emerge as a mixture of nature and nurture, that most good leaders can lead in a variety of climates and situations, but that a perfect leadership situation might not emerge for any one leader. For other leaders, a perfect situational opportunity might emerge that suits their leadership style, and transformational change can occur under their direction.

The science of leadership has found that some personal traits are more commonly associated with leaders than nonleaders, including extraversion, self-efficacy, conscientiousness, intelligence, and openness to experience. However, absence of these characteristics does not guarantee a hopeless leadership void; equally true, the presence of them does not guarantee good leadership.

The Art

So one can go on for the length of an encyclopedia about the science of leadership, but what about the art of leadership? The ability of a leader to “read the audience,” to “take the pulse” of their staff, to strategize their next foray into new territory, or to say no to a new (seemingly exciting) opportunity. It is the art of leadership that is much more intriguing. I have had the good fortune of seeing a variety of incredible leaders at work, both within and outside of SHM, including their artful mastery of difficult situations.

There were plenty of these artful masters exemplified over the course of the three-day meeting worthy of mention. Three outgoing board members have long led the society down many strategic pathways with brilliance and ease. Lakshmi Halasyamani is wise, kind, and even-keeled. Eric Siegal is sharp-minded, sharp-witted, and sharp-tongued. Joe Li is authentic, energetic, and conscientious. Three oncoming members will bring vast experience and collective wisdom to the SHM board—Brad Sharpe, Patrick Torcson, and Howard Epstein.

In the brief session celebrating the past presidents, I was struck by the number of impressive names and faces who all have gone on to do an array of other jobs. Together, they represent a collective footprint of impressive magnitude. As past president Shaun Frost gave his thoughtful exit speech, and new president Eric Howell gave his lively, energetic, and humorous entry speech, I was reassured that we indeed are in good hands, with a foothold of grounded past leaders, and a wealth of talent on the launching board. Moreover, the introduction of three new Masters in Hospital Medicine—Scott Flanders, Jeff Wiese, and David Meltzer—adds to the collective wisdom and talent of SHM.

We were blessed at the meeting by the presence of other incredible leaders in health care, including Patrick Conway and David Feinberg. Dr. Conway, the CMO of Medicare, is a service-minded colleague determined to make CMS more transparent, easier to traverse, and more aligned with what its recipients really need. Dr. Feinberg is a genuinely compassionate physician who has transformed UCLA medical center from a Motel 6 to a Ritz-Carlton in customer service. I have seen him speak before and had quite a bit of respect for him to begin with, but to watch how he handled a flock of unwieldy and uninvited guests on the stage was more than what anyone could expect from a great leader.

The Art of the Science

As we continue this unwieldy and unpredictable journey that we call health care and hospital medicine, the need for effective leadership within the industry will continue to increase. And there is little need to argue about whether leaders are naturally born, because there are more leaders needed than there are natural-born. So either way, many of us have to figure out how to be leaders, whether of a small program, a newly formed group, or a large conglomerate. And whether your contribution is large or small, it will be a contribution nonetheless.

Just as Mother Teresa was once presented with a statement from a reporter about how her care for the poor and neglected was just a “drop in the bucket” on combating poverty and dispassion. She paused and agreed: “Yes, it is just a drop in the bucket but it’s my drop.”

Just as Dr. Feinberg recounted when he was first offered the CEO position at UCLA, as an interim and unlikely candidate, he didn’t know what to do, so he just started doing what he knew how to do best. He just started walking around the hospital seeing patients, listening, visiting, saying “hello,” and giving out his business cards (his drop in the bucket). He wasn’t trying to do anything terribly innovative or strategic at the time—at least, not that he admits to. And anyone who watches Larry Wellikson work a boardroom or a ballroom can learn something about the art of leadership.

So think of leadership not as a secret sauce, or set of skills that can only be relegated to those enshrined with the DNA of a Kennedy or an MBA from an Ivy League school. It is a willingness to try to get some drops in some buckets, and lead people in a common direction. It is about being unambiguously committed and completely authentic, with a little science, and a lot of art.

Dr. Scheurer is a hospitalist and chief quality officer at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. She is physician editor of The Hospitalist. Email her at [email protected].

After wrapping up the SHM annual meeting, I was left with a sense of security about hospital medicine’s future. This security I can summarize in a single word: leadership. SHM has long had a strong set of leaders, which are needed now more than ever. With explosive expansion in volume and scope, hospitalist practice is going to require tireless leadership in the coming years and decades to ensure our trajectory is strategic and viable.

The Science

Wikipedia describes leadership as “a process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task.” Notice a few key words in that definition? “Process,” which implies that it takes time, patience, and tenacity. It is not something that automatically happens without any time or effort. Also notice the word “influence,” which does not include “power” or “authority” or “pay grade”—all terms that are entirely overused and misused in the medical industry.

There is a wealth of literature describing what leadership is and what it takes to be a leader. There are an abundance of theories on what traits and characteristics make up a good leader, and an equal abundance of theories on how great leaders evolve. Some subscribe to the inherited theory, in which genetic makeup will at least partially dictate whether you will be a “natural-born” a leader. Others subscribe to the belief that leadership is more situational, whereby leaders are effective in some situations but ineffective in others. Still others believe leaders emerge as a mixture of nature and nurture, that most good leaders can lead in a variety of climates and situations, but that a perfect leadership situation might not emerge for any one leader. For other leaders, a perfect situational opportunity might emerge that suits their leadership style, and transformational change can occur under their direction.

The science of leadership has found that some personal traits are more commonly associated with leaders than nonleaders, including extraversion, self-efficacy, conscientiousness, intelligence, and openness to experience. However, absence of these characteristics does not guarantee a hopeless leadership void; equally true, the presence of them does not guarantee good leadership.

The Art

So one can go on for the length of an encyclopedia about the science of leadership, but what about the art of leadership? The ability of a leader to “read the audience,” to “take the pulse” of their staff, to strategize their next foray into new territory, or to say no to a new (seemingly exciting) opportunity. It is the art of leadership that is much more intriguing. I have had the good fortune of seeing a variety of incredible leaders at work, both within and outside of SHM, including their artful mastery of difficult situations.

There were plenty of these artful masters exemplified over the course of the three-day meeting worthy of mention. Three outgoing board members have long led the society down many strategic pathways with brilliance and ease. Lakshmi Halasyamani is wise, kind, and even-keeled. Eric Siegal is sharp-minded, sharp-witted, and sharp-tongued. Joe Li is authentic, energetic, and conscientious. Three oncoming members will bring vast experience and collective wisdom to the SHM board—Brad Sharpe, Patrick Torcson, and Howard Epstein.

In the brief session celebrating the past presidents, I was struck by the number of impressive names and faces who all have gone on to do an array of other jobs. Together, they represent a collective footprint of impressive magnitude. As past president Shaun Frost gave his thoughtful exit speech, and new president Eric Howell gave his lively, energetic, and humorous entry speech, I was reassured that we indeed are in good hands, with a foothold of grounded past leaders, and a wealth of talent on the launching board. Moreover, the introduction of three new Masters in Hospital Medicine—Scott Flanders, Jeff Wiese, and David Meltzer—adds to the collective wisdom and talent of SHM.

We were blessed at the meeting by the presence of other incredible leaders in health care, including Patrick Conway and David Feinberg. Dr. Conway, the CMO of Medicare, is a service-minded colleague determined to make CMS more transparent, easier to traverse, and more aligned with what its recipients really need. Dr. Feinberg is a genuinely compassionate physician who has transformed UCLA medical center from a Motel 6 to a Ritz-Carlton in customer service. I have seen him speak before and had quite a bit of respect for him to begin with, but to watch how he handled a flock of unwieldy and uninvited guests on the stage was more than what anyone could expect from a great leader.

The Art of the Science

As we continue this unwieldy and unpredictable journey that we call health care and hospital medicine, the need for effective leadership within the industry will continue to increase. And there is little need to argue about whether leaders are naturally born, because there are more leaders needed than there are natural-born. So either way, many of us have to figure out how to be leaders, whether of a small program, a newly formed group, or a large conglomerate. And whether your contribution is large or small, it will be a contribution nonetheless.

Just as Mother Teresa was once presented with a statement from a reporter about how her care for the poor and neglected was just a “drop in the bucket” on combating poverty and dispassion. She paused and agreed: “Yes, it is just a drop in the bucket but it’s my drop.”

Just as Dr. Feinberg recounted when he was first offered the CEO position at UCLA, as an interim and unlikely candidate, he didn’t know what to do, so he just started doing what he knew how to do best. He just started walking around the hospital seeing patients, listening, visiting, saying “hello,” and giving out his business cards (his drop in the bucket). He wasn’t trying to do anything terribly innovative or strategic at the time—at least, not that he admits to. And anyone who watches Larry Wellikson work a boardroom or a ballroom can learn something about the art of leadership.

So think of leadership not as a secret sauce, or set of skills that can only be relegated to those enshrined with the DNA of a Kennedy or an MBA from an Ivy League school. It is a willingness to try to get some drops in some buckets, and lead people in a common direction. It is about being unambiguously committed and completely authentic, with a little science, and a lot of art.

Dr. Scheurer is a hospitalist and chief quality officer at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. She is physician editor of The Hospitalist. Email her at [email protected].

I read the article “Call for Transparency in Health-Care Performance Results to Impact Hospitalists” (January 2013, p. 47) by Shaun Frost, MD, SFHM, president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, with interest. I’d like to clarify a key point about Physician Compare. In the article, the statement that the Physician Compare website (www.medicare.gov/find-a-doctor) provides performance information on individual doctors is inaccurate.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) states that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) must have a plan in place by Jan. 1, 2013, to include quality-of-care information on the site. To meet that requirement, CMS has established a plan that initiates a phased approach to public reporting. The 2012 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Final Rule was the first step in that phased approach. This rule established that the first measures to be reported on the site would be group-level measures for data collected no sooner than program year 2012. A second critical step is the 2013 PFS Proposed Rule, which outlines a longer-term public reporting plan. According to this plan, we expect the first set of group-level quality measure data to be included on the site in calendar year 2014. We are targeting publishing individual-level quality measures no sooner than 2015 reflecting data collected in program year 2014, if technically feasible.

As you may be aware, Physician Compare is undergoing a redesign to significantly improve the underlying database and thus the information on Physician Compare, as well as the ease of use and functionality of the site. We’ll be unveiling the redesigned site soon. We welcome your feedback and look forward to maintaining a dialogue with you as Physician Compare continues to evolve.

Rashaan Byers, MPH, social science research analyst, Centers forMedicare & Medicaid Services, Center for Clinical Standards & Quality, Quality Measurement & Health Assessment Group

Dr. Frost responds:

I thank Mr. Byers for his clarification regarding the current content on the CMS Physician Compare website, and agree that at the present time the website does not report individual physician clinical performance data.

Physician Compare, however, does currently report if an individual physician participated in the CMS Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) by stating “this professional chose to take part in Medicare’s PQRS, and reported quality information satisfactorily for the year 2010.” For those physicians who did not participate in PQRS, their personal website pages do not make reference to the PQRS program.

As the intent of transparency is to educate consumers to make informed choices about where to seek health care, care providers should know that their participation in PQRS is currently publically reported. It is, therefore, possible that patient decisions about whom to seek care from may be influenced by this.

As acknowledged in my January 2013 column in The Hospitalist, Physician Compare currently reports very little information. We should expect this to change, however, as Medicare moves forward with developing a plan to publically report valid and reliable individual physician performance metrics. CMS’ clarification of the timeline by which we can expect to see more detailed information is thus greatly appreciated.

The take-home message for hospitalists is that public reporting of care provider performance will become increasingly comprehensive and transparent in the future. As pointed out, CMS’ present plan targets the publication of individual, physician-level quality measures as soon as 2015, which will reflect actual performance during program year 2014. The measurement period is thus less than one year away, so it behooves us all to focus ever more intently on delivering high-value healthcare.

Shaun Frost, MD, SFHM, past president, SHM

I read the article “Call for Transparency in Health-Care Performance Results to Impact Hospitalists” (January 2013, p. 47) by Shaun Frost, MD, SFHM, president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, with interest. I’d like to clarify a key point about Physician Compare. In the article, the statement that the Physician Compare website (www.medicare.gov/find-a-doctor) provides performance information on individual doctors is inaccurate.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) states that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) must have a plan in place by Jan. 1, 2013, to include quality-of-care information on the site. To meet that requirement, CMS has established a plan that initiates a phased approach to public reporting. The 2012 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Final Rule was the first step in that phased approach. This rule established that the first measures to be reported on the site would be group-level measures for data collected no sooner than program year 2012. A second critical step is the 2013 PFS Proposed Rule, which outlines a longer-term public reporting plan. According to this plan, we expect the first set of group-level quality measure data to be included on the site in calendar year 2014. We are targeting publishing individual-level quality measures no sooner than 2015 reflecting data collected in program year 2014, if technically feasible.

As you may be aware, Physician Compare is undergoing a redesign to significantly improve the underlying database and thus the information on Physician Compare, as well as the ease of use and functionality of the site. We’ll be unveiling the redesigned site soon. We welcome your feedback and look forward to maintaining a dialogue with you as Physician Compare continues to evolve.

Rashaan Byers, MPH, social science research analyst, Centers forMedicare & Medicaid Services, Center for Clinical Standards & Quality, Quality Measurement & Health Assessment Group

Dr. Frost responds:

I thank Mr. Byers for his clarification regarding the current content on the CMS Physician Compare website, and agree that at the present time the website does not report individual physician clinical performance data.

Physician Compare, however, does currently report if an individual physician participated in the CMS Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) by stating “this professional chose to take part in Medicare’s PQRS, and reported quality information satisfactorily for the year 2010.” For those physicians who did not participate in PQRS, their personal website pages do not make reference to the PQRS program.

As the intent of transparency is to educate consumers to make informed choices about where to seek health care, care providers should know that their participation in PQRS is currently publically reported. It is, therefore, possible that patient decisions about whom to seek care from may be influenced by this.

As acknowledged in my January 2013 column in The Hospitalist, Physician Compare currently reports very little information. We should expect this to change, however, as Medicare moves forward with developing a plan to publically report valid and reliable individual physician performance metrics. CMS’ clarification of the timeline by which we can expect to see more detailed information is thus greatly appreciated.

The take-home message for hospitalists is that public reporting of care provider performance will become increasingly comprehensive and transparent in the future. As pointed out, CMS’ present plan targets the publication of individual, physician-level quality measures as soon as 2015, which will reflect actual performance during program year 2014. The measurement period is thus less than one year away, so it behooves us all to focus ever more intently on delivering high-value healthcare.

Shaun Frost, MD, SFHM, past president, SHM

I read the article “Call for Transparency in Health-Care Performance Results to Impact Hospitalists” (January 2013, p. 47) by Shaun Frost, MD, SFHM, president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, with interest. I’d like to clarify a key point about Physician Compare. In the article, the statement that the Physician Compare website (www.medicare.gov/find-a-doctor) provides performance information on individual doctors is inaccurate.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) states that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) must have a plan in place by Jan. 1, 2013, to include quality-of-care information on the site. To meet that requirement, CMS has established a plan that initiates a phased approach to public reporting. The 2012 Physician Fee Schedule (PFS) Final Rule was the first step in that phased approach. This rule established that the first measures to be reported on the site would be group-level measures for data collected no sooner than program year 2012. A second critical step is the 2013 PFS Proposed Rule, which outlines a longer-term public reporting plan. According to this plan, we expect the first set of group-level quality measure data to be included on the site in calendar year 2014. We are targeting publishing individual-level quality measures no sooner than 2015 reflecting data collected in program year 2014, if technically feasible.

As you may be aware, Physician Compare is undergoing a redesign to significantly improve the underlying database and thus the information on Physician Compare, as well as the ease of use and functionality of the site. We’ll be unveiling the redesigned site soon. We welcome your feedback and look forward to maintaining a dialogue with you as Physician Compare continues to evolve.

Rashaan Byers, MPH, social science research analyst, Centers forMedicare & Medicaid Services, Center for Clinical Standards & Quality, Quality Measurement & Health Assessment Group

Dr. Frost responds:

I thank Mr. Byers for his clarification regarding the current content on the CMS Physician Compare website, and agree that at the present time the website does not report individual physician clinical performance data.

Physician Compare, however, does currently report if an individual physician participated in the CMS Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) by stating “this professional chose to take part in Medicare’s PQRS, and reported quality information satisfactorily for the year 2010.” For those physicians who did not participate in PQRS, their personal website pages do not make reference to the PQRS program.

As the intent of transparency is to educate consumers to make informed choices about where to seek health care, care providers should know that their participation in PQRS is currently publically reported. It is, therefore, possible that patient decisions about whom to seek care from may be influenced by this.

As acknowledged in my January 2013 column in The Hospitalist, Physician Compare currently reports very little information. We should expect this to change, however, as Medicare moves forward with developing a plan to publically report valid and reliable individual physician performance metrics. CMS’ clarification of the timeline by which we can expect to see more detailed information is thus greatly appreciated.

The take-home message for hospitalists is that public reporting of care provider performance will become increasingly comprehensive and transparent in the future. As pointed out, CMS’ present plan targets the publication of individual, physician-level quality measures as soon as 2015, which will reflect actual performance during program year 2014. The measurement period is thus less than one year away, so it behooves us all to focus ever more intently on delivering high-value healthcare.

Shaun Frost, MD, SFHM, past president, SHM

ANSWER
The radiograph shows some evidence of hyperinflated lungs, consistent with COPD. There is a small right effusion evident.

Of note is a superior mediastinal mass, which is causing right-sided and anterior displacement of the intrathoracic trachea. The differential includes possible adenopathy related to a carcinoma or a substernal goiter. Further diagnostic studies and surgical evaluation are warranted.

In this particular case, review of the patient’s imaging history showed he had a chest radiograph two years ago, at which time these findings were present. This favors substernal goiter as the diagnosis. Multinodular goiter was later confirmed with a thyroid ultrasound, and referral to general surgery was made.

ANSWER
The radiograph shows some evidence of hyperinflated lungs, consistent with COPD. There is a small right effusion evident.

Of note is a superior mediastinal mass, which is causing right-sided and anterior displacement of the intrathoracic trachea. The differential includes possible adenopathy related to a carcinoma or a substernal goiter. Further diagnostic studies and surgical evaluation are warranted.

In this particular case, review of the patient’s imaging history showed he had a chest radiograph two years ago, at which time these findings were present. This favors substernal goiter as the diagnosis. Multinodular goiter was later confirmed with a thyroid ultrasound, and referral to general surgery was made.

ANSWER
The radiograph shows some evidence of hyperinflated lungs, consistent with COPD. There is a small right effusion evident.

Of note is a superior mediastinal mass, which is causing right-sided and anterior displacement of the intrathoracic trachea. The differential includes possible adenopathy related to a carcinoma or a substernal goiter. Further diagnostic studies and surgical evaluation are warranted.

In this particular case, review of the patient’s imaging history showed he had a chest radiograph two years ago, at which time these findings were present. This favors substernal goiter as the diagnosis. Multinodular goiter was later confirmed with a thyroid ultrasound, and referral to general surgery was made.

The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors have quickly become important treatment options for persons with type 2 diabetes. This article reviews the differences among the 3 GLP-1R agonists and 4 DPP-4 inhibitors currently available and how these differences impact treatment individualization. Emphasis is placed on strategies to improve patient self-management with the GLP-1R agonists, particularly those related to nausea and vomiting and medication adherence.

Physicians and Physician Assistants – Click Here to Take the Test

The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors have quickly become important treatment options for persons with type 2 diabetes. This article reviews the differences among the 3 GLP-1R agonists and 4 DPP-4 inhibitors currently available and how these differences impact treatment individualization. Emphasis is placed on strategies to improve patient self-management with the GLP-1R agonists, particularly those related to nausea and vomiting and medication adherence.

Physicians and Physician Assistants – Click Here to Take the Test

The glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor (GLP-1R) agonists and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors have quickly become important treatment options for persons with type 2 diabetes. This article reviews the differences among the 3 GLP-1R agonists and 4 DPP-4 inhibitors currently available and how these differences impact treatment individualization. Emphasis is placed on strategies to improve patient self-management with the GLP-1R agonists, particularly those related to nausea and vomiting and medication adherence.

Physicians and Physician Assistants – Click Here to Take the Test