Questionable Value Using Hospitalists
January 1st, 2008
Hospitalists is the wave of the vuture for medical business management? Maybe and maybe not. A new study by the New England Journal of Medicine questions the value of hospitalists for system savings for medical practices. There was no significant difference between inpatient days and hospital stays.
David Harlow writes more about Hospitalists and the NEJM study:
This issue comes to the fore at the same time as a related resource question — how should physicians be paid for their services? Part of the premise, all along, has been that hospitalists will save hospitals money; therefore, hospitalists’ salaries are often subsidized in part by their institutions. These salaries are seen as being in need of supplementation, or subsidization, thanks to the proceduralist-skewed Medicare physician fee schedule (see, e.g., Roy Poses’ RUC rant at Health Care Renewal) which arguably under compensates internal medicine. The fee schedule is up for a 10% rollback January 1, though yet another Congressional waiver of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) rules is virtually guaranteed.
Read more about impatient stay and hospital billing here.
