AdventHealth Central Texas: What is a hospitalist?

By Janna Zepp | Photos by Krista Kasper of AdventHealth Central Texas

If you’ve been hospitalized, chances are good that you have been examined by a hospitalist. You likely didn’t know it at the time, but they were in charge of your care while you were a patient there.

“A…what?” you might ask, and understandably so. It’s not a field most people have ever heard of.

A hospitalist is a physician who has dedicated her or his career to hospitalized patients. The specialty has only been around for the last 25 years but has proven effective in giving patients better in-hospital care and frees up primary care physicians to stay at their offices to serve other patients without a constant ping-pong-style trek between office and hospital.

Medical specialists who generally earn a residency in internal medicine and are certified in hospital medicine are usually hospitalists. Their practice within a hospital setting mostly involves medicine, but they can also specialize in non-medical issues that are relevant to their field of study.

Your primary care provider conducts regular check-ups in his or her office. You also visit them for specific health concerns, advice, or for referrals to a specialist, and you work with them for preventive care, meaning that if they detect something of concern, they will do what it takes to keep you healthy. When you are admitted to the hospital, it is the hospitalist who takes your care from there.

“Unlike primary physicians, hospitalists do not have office hours; that’s because the hospital is their office and they usually work varying shifts,” says Hospitalist Dr. Erin Reed of AdventHealth Central Texas in Killeen. “A hospitalist is often an internist, but all internists aren’t hospitalists. The big difference between a hospitalist and a primary physician is the doctor-patient relationship — while a primary physician has the opportunity to build long-term patient-doctor relationships, sometimes over the course of years or even a lifetime, a hospitalist may only see you once.”

Hospitalists often maintain long-term professional relationships with their hospitals, and strong, collaborative associations with the many medical professionals, specialists, staff and administrators within each hospital organization. AdventHealth has taken one step more in a hospitalist partnership with Baylor Scott & White Health in Central Texas.

“What this means for patients is more hospitalists with a broad variety of specialties to care for them,” says AdventHealth Chief Medical Officer Dr. Erin Bird. “It is the hospitalist who takes over the hospital patient’s in-hospital care. They consult health records and diagnosis taken by the patient’s primary care physician, but the hospitalist serves as the sole provider during a patient’s hospital stay. The resources our AdventHealth-Baylor Scott & White partnership provides now serve our patients better.”

The hospitalist might not be the only doctor to visit your room, but she or he is responsible for the coordination of your care. Hospitalists communicate with doctors and nurses about your care, serve as your medical contact while you are admitted, and they deliver updates about your care to your family members or other designated contacts.

Bird and Reed both say that, while you might not get to know the hospitalist as well you would your family doctor, know they are there to serve you.

“We have first-hand knowledge of hospital policy,” Bird says. “We often serve on different hospital committees to enhance a hospital patient’s experience because many of us know and understand specific conditions that put patients in the hospital in the first place.”

“We see and treat patients who have similar conditions repeatedly. While your primary doctor might not be the one looking after you in the middle of the night, we are ready to help when you need us, working closely with you, your family, and the hospital staff to assess your condition, recommend treatment, order tests, and prescribe medications,” Reed adds.