Are hospitalists a part of the solution to the problems caused by America’s fragmented health care system? Bob Wachter thinks so, and I think he might be on to something.
Wachter, chief of the division of hospital medicine at University of California-San Francisco, says:
…since hospitals are the target of most robust quality reporting, pay-for-performance, and patient safety mandates, hospitalists share their worldview on these issues as well. If I’m getting money from my hospital, I damn well better help the hospital achieve excellent performance on publicly reported hospital quality data, “no pay for errors”, Joint Commission National Patient Safety goals, patient satisfaction scores, readmission rates, and the other scary things that keep my hospital CMO up at night.
In other words, well-organized hospitalist programs share their hospital’s accountabilities.
I wonder if hospitalists, generally speaking, are in leadership positions in which they can maximize the shared accountabilities that lead to better quality and lower cost care. Your thoughts, please?