Hospitalists: A Guide to Building and Sustaining a Successful Program
Joseph A. Miller
John Nelson, MD
Winthrop F. Whitcomb, MD
Co Publisher: The Society of Hospital Medicine
ISBN 13: 978-1-56793-283-6
Softbound, 271 pp, 2007
Imprint: ACHE Management Series Book
Order code: WWW1-2097
Price: $75.00
As knowledgeable clinicians and professionals, hospitalists have the ability to make major contributions to quality, patient safety, resource utilization, and patient flow. Is your organization realizing the full benefits of hospital medicine? Use the strategies and tools in this book to develop, implement, and sustain a successful hospitalist program.
Strategic planning for your hospitalist program
The first half of the book provides a strategic perspective on hospital medicine. It explains how to evaluate return on investment, summarizes high-level dos and don’ts, and presents an overview of legal and contracting considerations.
Best practices for managing your hospital medicine group
The second part of the book focuses on the details of implementing and sustaining a successful hospital medicine program. It covers a wide range of topics including compensation and performance management, communications, staffing, the role of the medical director, information systems, and billing revenue.
Joseph A. Miller is the executive advisor to the CEO for the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM). In this role, Mr. Miller oversees SHM's membership/marketing functions, data management/web services, and business operations. In addition, he coordinates SHM's biannual Productivity and Compensation Survey, staffs the SHM Benchmarks Committee and Career Satisfaction Task Force, and is course director for SHM’s Practice Management Pre-Course. Mr. Miller does part-time hospitalist consulting with Dr. Winthrop Whitcomb, with whom he cofounded Northeast Hospitalist Consulting. He has more than 30 years of management, consulting, and market research experience with provider organizations, health plans, academic institutions, and vendors.
John Nelson, MD, FACP, is one of the founders of the hospitalist movement and has been a practicing hospitalist since 1988. He is a hospitalist and the hospitalist program’s medical director at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, Washington. Since 1994, he has been working with institutions around the United States to start new hospitalist practices or to improve existing ones. He is the founder of Nelson/Flores Associates, a consulting firm that provides guidance for hospitalist practices. Dr. Nelson serves as faculty for the Hospitalist Practice Management Course sponsored by the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM). He, along with Dr. Winthrop Whitcomb, cofounded SHM and has served as its past president.
Winthrop F. Whitcomb, MD, has been a practicing hospitalist since 1994 at Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. From 1994 through 2004, he served as director of the Mercy Inpatient Medicine Service, America’s first and most widely emulated program with 24/7 on-site hospitalist staffing. Since cofounding the Society of Hospital Medicine in 1996, he has been widely recognized as a principal leader of the U.S. hospitalist movement and the field of hospital medicine. Currently, Dr. Whitcomb serves as director of Performance Improvement at Mercy Medical Center and as director of Hospitalist Services for Catholic Health East, a 42-hospital system in the eastern United States. He is assistant professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He has provided consultation to hospitalist programs throughout the United States since 1996.
“As the chief executive officer, I can recount firsthand how our hospitalist program has improved patient care in our facilities. This book offers concrete, practical advice on how to build and sustain a well-managed hospitalist program. It covers a wide range of topics—from scheduling to performance reporting—that must be addressed to achieve success with regard to quality of care, throughput, the bottom line, and medical staff satisfaction.”
—David L. Bernd, FACHE, Chief Executive Officer, Sentara Healthcare and Past President, American Hospital Association (from the Foreword)
