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Hospitalist numbers and care rising, study says

Hospitalist Leadership Connection, March 17, 2009

A new study confirms what many have suspected for a long time; the number of hospitalists is on the rise, according to researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Department of Internal Medicine, in Galveston. According to the paper, “Growth in the Care of Older Patients by Hospitalists in the United States,” published in the March 12 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine, care by hospitalists is growing as well.

Researchers conducted the study on 120,226 general internists in 5,800 hospitals in the U.S. from 1995 to 2006. The researchers defined “hospitalists” as general internists who derive 90% or more of their Medicare claims for evaluation-and-management (E&M) services. They found that the number of hospitalists more than tripled in the last decade from 5.9% in 1995 to 19.0% in 2006.

In addition, the odds of a patient receiving care from a hospitalist also soared--29% each year from 1997 through 2006.The number of Medicare claims for inpatient E&M services attributed to hospitalists also rose from 9.1% to 37.1%.

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