Surgical Hospitalist Blog Draft 2.

With this weeks blog entry we will look into a hospitalist specialty of surgical hospitalists. First, lets look into a general surgeon and then dive into background about surgical hospitalists. Today general surgeons do not have enough time or its too impractical for them to take on emergency calls or see their patients in a hospital. For example, general surgeons today are becoming increasingly focused and specialized in areas like advanced laparoscopic surgery, bariatric surgery, endovascular surgery, and breast cancer. 1As the forecasted specialization procedures are growing, it creates a problem with the time intensive practice of surgery.

Many general surgeons are slowly leaving hospitals and finding work in ambulatory surgical centers. Ambulatory surgical centers offer same day surgical care and overnight hospitalization is not required. Patients come in with relatively good health and leave at the end of the day.2 There has been a growing trend with ambulatory surgical centers. Today there are over 3,300 nationwide and since the 1970s ambulatory care has skyrocketed. 3 Surgeons are able to take on

http://www.asge.org/uploadedFiles/Members_Only/Practice_Management/Ambulatory%20Surgery%20Centers% 20%E2%80%93%20A%20Positive%20Trend%20in%20Health%20Care.pdf
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http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/06/fields-general-surgery-rise-surgical-hospitalist.html http://www.fiercehealthcare.com/topics/ambulatory_care.asp

surgeries that come with convenient scheduling or economic benefit.4 This all adds up to general surgeons not finding it beneficial to be on call and come into the hospital for emergency surgeries. A Surgical hospitalist comes in to help fill in some of the gaps that general surgeons leave in the hospital. A surgical hospitalist is a surgeon that only works in the inpatient setting, with no office or private practice. Surgical hospitalists tend to work in block scheduling where they sometimes work a full week with lots of hours and then they get the following week off. Surgical hospitalists perform trauma surgery, surgical critical care, and emergency general surgery. 5They also cover for general surgeons in the area by making rounds on their inpatients, handling phone calls from private practice patients, seeing patients from the emergency department and impatient medical services, and of course preforming any emergency procedures that are needed.6 Working with inpatients is something that attracts hospitals to surgical hospitalists, since as mentioned before; general surgeons have less time to do so. Surgical hospitalists are always on site and are always connected to the patients they work with. They often follow a patient from the time they enter the hospital to the time they leave it. Hospitals rotate teams of surgical hospitalists so that one would be available 24/7. Surgical hospitalists would be a good fit to replace general surgeons at hospitals because they can perform trauma surgeries and they are entirely at the hospital. The University of California San Francisco Medical Center did a study on surgical hospitalists that demonstrates the benefits that the surgical hospitalists add. During the study they implemented rotating surgical hospitalists to a hospital schedule. A faster consultation response time was seen as it just averaged 16 minutes and 80% of patients were seen within 30 minutes. Furthermore, wait time for certain surgeries like an appendectomy decreased by 50 percent. A survey was conducted after the study with ED physicians and they believed the program not only resulted in a shorter length of stay for patients, but it also improved patient satisfaction and it improved professionalism.7 Due to these benefits, surgical hospitalists are on the rise. There are between 200-300 surgical hospitalists programs across the United States8. This number is expected to rise as the demand increases as more general surgeons decide to spend more time working at ambulatory surgical centers. By 2020 the United States will have a shortage of between 24,000 and 200,000 doctors. 9 Hospitals are in desperate need of surgeons and the value they have for surgical hospitalists is appropriately high.
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http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/HOM-218682/Rapid-rise-of-surgical-hospitalists.html## http://www.columbiasurgery.org/acute/ 6 http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/06/fields-general-surgery-rise-surgical-hospitalist.html

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http://www.innovations.ahrq.gov/content.aspx?id=1697 http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/HOM-218682/Rapid-rise-of-surgical-hospitalists.html## http://www.healthleadersmedia.com/content/MAG-92871/Will-There-Be-Enough-Doctors##