Key Keynotes

The 10-year anniversary of SHM was an occasion not for looking back on the first decade of the organization, but for looking ahead.

In addition to seven tracks of educational sessions and ample opportunities for networking, SHM’s 10th Annual Meeting, held May 23-25 in Dallas, provided opportunities to get a big-picture glimpse into the future of hospital medicine, in the form of some eye-opening plenary sessions.

Coming Soon: Hospital Medicine Certification

Annual Meeting attendees heard from Robert M. Wachter, MD, and past-SHM President Mary Jo Gorman, MD, MBA, on “Certification in Hospital Medicine: What Does This Mean to Hospitalists? To Employers? To Patients?” The two outlined how the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) is developing a Focused Recognition for Hospital Medicine through its Maintenance of Certification (MOC) system.

Dr. Wachter, who chairs the ABIM Committee on Hospital Medicine Focused Recognition, explained that the focused recognition would give hospitalists a formal credential that recognizes hospital medicine as a distinct field within internal medicine. This is the first time ABIM has offered focused recognition for any subset of internal medicine—and, if approved, the first time the umbrella organization, the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), will offer a focused recognition for a subset of any specialty.

“This is a brand new idea,” stressed Dr. Wachter. “One of the exciting things—the challenging things—is that this is a first step toward the broader issue of how to certify based on experience rather than just training.”

Pre-Courses Provide In-Depth Learning

The Annual Meeting included six all-day or half-day pre-courses offered May 23. Geri L. Barnes, SHM’s director of Education and Quality Initiatives, says that typically 60% to 70% of annual meeting attendees sign up for a pre-course, and attendance in Dallas was in line with that average.

Some pre-courses have been offered previously. For example, “Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” is offered every year because the topic has been deemed popular enough or vital enough to warrant offering again.

“The Annual Meeting Committee basically recommends the topics for pre-courses,” says Barnes. But their decisions are based on the Core Competencies in Hospital Medicine. “[This document] drives the content of our breakout sessions and the pre-courses. We try to meld the pre-courses with the tracks offered at the Annual Meeting. For instance, we talked about offering a palliative care pre-course here in Dallas, but we ended up including a session track on the topic instead. We try to offer a complete package.”

The pre-courses offered in Dallas included:

“Best Practices in Managing a Hospital Medicine Program” by Joseph A. Miller, MS
“Critical Care Medicine for the Hospitalist” by Sheri Chernetsky Tejedor, MD
“High Impact Quality Improvement: How to Ensure a Successful Project” by Gregory Maynard, MD, and Tosha B. Wetterneck, MD
“Fundamentals of Inpatient Coding and Documentation: Getting Paid What You Deserve” by Leslie A. Flores, MHA
“Perioperative Medicine for the Hospitalist’’ by Shaun Frost, MD
“PICC Line Placement for Pediatric and Adult Hospitalists” by Nancy Moureau, BSN, CRNI — JJ

A Look at Digital Medicine

Informally known as the “health technology czar,” David J. Brailer, MD, PhD, served as the first national coordinator for Health Information Technology, at the Department of Health and Human Services until he resigned in April 2006. He is vice chairman of the American Health Information Community, and based on his plenary session “Health Care’s Digital Era: Implications for Hospitalists,” he is obviously familiar with hospital medicine.

“Hospitalists and health IT are co-factors in the same equation of change in healthcare,” said Dr. Brailer. “I can’t see how one can exist without the other.”