Background: Executing safe transitions of care for hospitalized patients is important because of the vulnerability of patients during this time period.  While hospital-based providers frequently schedule appointments on behalf of their patients prior to discharge, cancellations and non-attendance (“no-shows”) for post-discharge follow-up appointments are anecdotally common and diminish the quality  of patient care.  Little is [...]

Background: Co-management across service lines has become increasingly common in hospital medicine. While debate continues over clinical outcomes, some co-management arrangements have led to enhanced provider satisfaction, which may have implications for burnout. We have established successful co-management services with orthopedics, urology (GU), otorhinolaryngology (ENT), trauma and neurosurgery (NS). We are a large urban/suburban academic [...]

Background: Executing safe transitions of care for hospitalized patients is important because of the vulnerability of patients during this time period.  While hospital-based providers frequently schedule appointments on behalf of their patients prior to discharge, cancellations and non-attendance (“no-shows”) for post-discharge follow-up appointments are anecdotally common and diminish the quality  of patient care.  Little is [...]

Background: Co-management across service lines has become increasingly common in hospital medicine. While debate continues over clinical outcomes, some co-management arrangements have led to enhanced provider satisfaction, which may have implications for burnout. We have established successful co-management services with orthopedics, urology (GU), otorhinolaryngology (ENT), trauma and neurosurgery (NS). We are a large urban/suburban academic [...]

Background: Control over work hours and schedule flexibility are important predictors of clinicians’ career satisfaction, work-life balance, and burnout, which are in turn linked to quality of patient care, recruitment, and retention. Additionally, several recent editorials questioned the “7-on/7-off scheduling.” In a rapidly expanding academic hospital medicine group with 63 physicians, the scheduling process is [...]

Background: Hospital Medicine (HM) practices have traditionally utilized an extended ‘7 on/7 off’ (7/7) schedule. Occupational Health studies suggest that such schedules can increase physiologic and psychologic stressors (Keller). Despite their prevalence, the effects of extended scheduling on physician well-being and performance are unknown. We sought to study the effect of 7/7 scheduling on well-being [...]

Background: Prior to Jul 2023, at our academic hospital medicine program, the 6-month clinical schedule was created in commercial scheduling software and released 2-4 weeks before the start of that schedule. The actual schedule creation took 3+ months. This led to physician discontent due to the inability to plan professional and personal obligations. Our schedule [...]

Background: The optimal duration of hospitalist clinical blocks is unknown. Longer block lengths may offer greater continuity and discontinuity between providers has been adversely associated with 30-day mortality and readmissions. However, extending days worked may lead to fatigue and negatively impact hospitalist satisfaction or contribute to burnout. We conducted a randomized trial comparing two different [...]