The hospital CEO today has increasing challenges convincing physicians to take hospital call. Some find themselves paying sizable sums of money for surgeons to take call from home. Some have decided their money is better spent paying for surgical hospitalists to spend nights in the hospital waiting for their pager to go off.

From a patient’s perspective, this seems to be a no-brainer. Having a surgeon in the hospital increases their chances of more timely care. You have to believe the providers in the ED and the medical hospitalist also love having a surgeon in-house, available to provide consults when requested.

I am a bit surprised that we don’t already have a large number of surgical hospitalists in the country. Then again, I have no idea of how many surgeons are working as surgical hospitalists. I am not sure anybody knows that answer.

There is a belief that we are going to see the continued growth of “specialty hospitalists” in the U.S. I believe we are going to see neurohospitalists managing inpatients with stroke and other neurosurgical issues, working side by side with medical hospitalists. I share in the excitement that was pervasive in the early days of the hospitalist movement, even though I’m not sure what we are going to see next.

I never imagined that we would have more than 30,000 hospitalists, as we do today. But while the HM model can help improve care, I will always feel strongly that no system will improve care without the dedication of motivated and compassionate healthcare providers driving the system. TH