Newsletter Fall 2002

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Hospitalists: A New Specialty
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October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Welcome New Physicians and Clinicians

Hospitalists: A New Specialty

Dr. Randal Moseley is an internal medicine physician who has been in practice for eighteen years, the first fifteen in Wyoming before coming to Wenatchee. During that time he’s seen fundamental change in patient treatment.

“Fifteen years ago physicians had a lot of patients in the hospital,” says Moseley. “It was pretty easy to block out a big section of time in the morning to go do your hospital rounds. You had enough people in the hospital to make that an efficient process.”

Technological advances and new, less invasive procedures have significantly reduced the time a patient is hospitalized. People now go home after many procedures that once required hospitalization. In the past, a doctor might have ten or fifteen patients in the hospital at a time. Now they may have two or three.

“Having two or three patients in the hospital can be really disruptive to everybody’s schedule,” says Moseley. “You might have to be called away in the middle of the afternoon. Some patient’s might have to be rescheduled or delayed - all those things that people don’t like. It’s to answer those sorts of issues that the hospitalist movement started.”

Hospitalists are physicians, most often internists like Dr. Moseley, who specialize in caring for hospitalized patients. The only patients they see are people in the hospital. The Hospitalists in Wenatchee are Wenatchee Valley Medical Center (WVMC) physicians. They work at Central Washington Hospital, and will soon work at Wenatchee Valley Hospital (located on the Wenatchee Valley Clinic campus).

Dr. Moseley is the Lead Hospitalist, and was responsible for getting the program up and running. Along with Moseley are Hospitalists Simone Phillips, MD and Ann Murray, MD, both of whom joined WVMC from practices as hospitalists.

“What hospitalists provide from a patient’s perspective,” says Dr. Ann Murray, “is someone who is accessible during the time they’re in the hospital. For me, being here all the time helps me get familiar with the inner workings of the hospital.”

“It benefits patients because they have somebody who specializes in the type of care they need right now,” says Moseley. “Having a doctor at the hospital all day also makes them more accessible to hospital staff and patient’s families. I can deal with issues as they come up rather than waiting until the end of the day at the office.”

Issues like seeing the results of tests as soon as they’re available, and being able to act upon them are possible when the doctor is at the hospital all day; or being accessible to patient’s families when they want to talk. Along with being accessible, the Hospitalist become more efficient, not only in the workings of the hospital, but in the treatment of seriously ill patients.

“As medicine gets more complicated,” says Murray, “it’s harder to stay up-to-date on outpatient care and inpatient care, both. The split is allowing doctors to become better at one.”

“If you’re just taking care of hospitalized patients, then you’re going to be good at it,” agrees Moseley. “The data suggests that lengths of stay drop about ten to fifteen percent when you get a hospitalist service on board. Costs also drop by about that amount. It’s the efficiency. If all you’re doing is taking care of hospitalized patients you’re doing it more efficiently.”

Hospitalists also work with patients with health problems not related to their hospital stay. F