A new revolution in medicine in these days is the advent of the hospitalist. The hospitalist, as it sounds, takes care of patients who need to be hospitalized by their primary care physician. How it used to be done was that the family doctor would often see patients in the morning before going to clinic to round on his or her hospitalized patients. Often there would only be one or few patients to see. Many considered this to be time-consuming, and so physicians trained to deal with hospitalized patients working jointly with the primary care physician were established. This theoretically left the primary care doctor to devote more time to his or her outpatient clinic. Most hospitalists arose from HMO-type settings, but more and more are coming from different practice environments.
Who are hospitalists? Generally they are physicians trained usually in internal medicine who may come from other fields. The latest surveys show most are young, reflecting the establishment of this recent type of doctor. There is no specialty (yet) that trains a doctor to be a hospitalist, but general internal medicine doctors appear to be the best fit. The obvious drawback is that a different doctor will be taking care of you when you are more ill, and not the family doc who knows you the best. As the hospitalist phenomena gains in popularity, it is still much too early to tell whether or not the transition will be a successful one, however.
