Hospitalist program improves patient care
Western Baptist’s new hospitalists are meeting the needs of patients who don’t have physicians on staff.
“Hospitalists help manage patients throughout the continuum of care,” said Ryan Frazine, M.D., “admitting them from the Emergency department, following them throughout their stay and organizing their follow-up care with their primary care physician.”
Frazine, a Paducah internal medicine physician since 2005, is the new program’s medical director. Other hospitalists are Scott Wilson, M.D., and Masoud Kalantar, M.D., both trained in internal medicine.
Frazine said patients arriving at Western Baptist without their own admitting physician benefit from this innovation because hospitalists offer:
- AVAILABILITY. Hospitalists do not work outside the hospital in a medical practice, so their hours are spent solely in the hospital, caring for patients. They can communicate frequently with the patient, his or her family and the nursing staff, as well as monitor test results as soon as they are available.
“We are here to coordinate their total care,” Dr. Frazine said, “from communicating with specialists to conferring with their primary care physician. It is a level of access that has grown increasingly difficult for the primary care physician to replicate while seeing a full load of patients in the office.”
- EXPERTISE. The need for increasing specialized care in the hospital makes it difficult for primary care physicians to stay abreast of developments, while the hospitalist focuses just on hospital care.
“Hospital medicine, like emergency medicine, is a specialty itself,” Dr. Frazine said, “organized around a site of care—the hospital, rather than focused on one disease, such as cancer, or a patient’s age, such as pediatrics.”
It is the fastest growing medical specialty in the history of medicine, with 2,000 hospitalists in 1998 and 30,000 projected in 2010. When the hospitalist program began in San Francisco a little more than a decade ago, some physicians feared that hospitalists would steal their patients. Dr. Frazine said that is not the case.
“The primary care doctor remains the care provider after the patient leaves the hospital,” he said. “We are their colleagues and partners, communicating with them from admission to discharge to assure that no information is lost when the patient transitions back to their outpatient care.”
In fact, physicians who see patients in their office say the new hospitalist program is helpful. Danny Butler, M.D., a Paducah internal medicine physician, said when people come into Western Baptist’s Emergency department without an admitting physician, he may be called to treat them. If he is seeing other patients, he may be unable to see them immediately.
“It’s hard to be in three places at the same time,” he said. “I believe the hospitalist can offer quicker service, continuity of care for patients during their hospital stay and spend adequate time with the patient.”
Brian Hawkins, M.D., emergency medicine physician at Western Baptist, said the hospitalist system improves efficiency and patient care. “Physicians in outlying counties can be assured that there is always someone here to take care of their patients,” he said. “They are here to admit them, take care of them during their hospital stay and then refer them back to their regular doctor at discharge.”
Cardiologist Patrick Withrow, M.D., Western Baptist vice president and chief medical officer, said the program shortens patient stays and improves quality. “They provide what our patients and their families want—excellent care, easy accessibility and frequent communication,” he said.
For more information about the hospitalist program, visit westernbaptist.com or phone (270) 575-8472.