Becker's Hospital Review

Discover What Together Can Do Clinical Staffing & Workforce Optimization Care Delivery Documentation & Revenue Cycle Virtual Health Advanced Care in the Home SCP Health is where healing meets performance. Our solutions balance the unique needs of health care organizations to propel clinical and operational progress. Scan to read A NEW Hospital Medicine Equation for a Post-COVID Future. Stacy Goldsholl, MD, MBA, Executive Vice President, Chief Medical Officer – Hospital and Critical Care Medicine As a specialty, hospital medicine is relatively young at 25 years. Over its short history, the role of hospitalists has continued to evolve, but their commitment to providing value, adapting to the changing health care landscape, and advancing inpatient care, even during challenging times, has never ceased. In fact, the one constant over the past 25 years has been the agility of hospitalists. It is that agility we must once again call upon as hospitals need a new answer to a familiar problem – how to provide quality, 24/7, inpatient care while maintaining financial solvency. In hospital medicine, value has been measured through dividing quality by cost, but it may be time to evolve that equation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the pressures on hospitalists created new challenges and new requirements for hospitalists emerged. Those with expertise in critical care were called upon to manage the complex, high-acuity patients and across the board, hospitalists and their care teams adapted to unprecedented, non-uniform, and difficult-to-predict surges in inpatient volumes and staffing shortages. While the surges have decreased, the shortages have not, increasing the pressure on clinical teams. Today's and tomorrow's hospitalists must be more efficient than ever, while continuing to deliver the highest quality care possible. And they can do it. As clinical leaders, hospital medicine programs are critical in leading change for care delivery. Given support and the right tools, hospitalists have the ability to impact both the cost and quality sides of the value equation. 1. Leverage telemedicine technologies. Telemedicine technology stepped up during the pandemic, providing new options to deal with patient surges and staffing shortages. Continue to utilize these capabilities by integrating telehospitalists, telenocturnists, and teleadmissionists as part of your care teams to reduce costs and aid in preventing clinician burnout without sacrificing quality. 2. Support the full patient journey. With the shift to value-based care, hospitalists are responsible not just for the care they provide to patients while they are admitted, but also for the 90-day post-acute continuum. Hospital medicine programs must take their integration with next sites of care to a new level, approaching care coordination with a laser focus on positive outcomes and preventing readmission. 3. Prioritize a clinical focus on metrics. Hospitalists must treat the patient in front of them while simultaneously focusing on their role in achieving high performance on the quality metrics of the facility. Currently, one of the most under-valued tactics in this area is prioritizing non-revenue generating time for leadership to address and support the management of these quality metrics by developing care pathways, algorithms, and collaborative processes. Hospitalists will continue to be leaders within hospital environments, with unique opportunities to provide strategic solutions addressing hospitals' biggest challenges. Through renewing our focus on clinical metrics, supporting the full patient journey, and leveraging telemedicine capabilities, we can advance the quality of care while reducing costs. Visit the link in the ad to learn more about the above strategies and additional ideas to transform hospital medicine programs. 3 Ways to Evolve your Hospital Medicine Program

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