Medical Staff

Plan a successful transition to geographic units

Medical Staff Briefing, September 1, 2010

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Medical Staff Briefing.

Plan a successful transition to geographic units

Editor’s note: The July HLA discussed the benefits of geographic units. This month, we continue the conversation about creating a successful plan to avoid potential pitfalls. 

Although some hospitalist programs have embraced unit-based patient care delivery methods (known as unit-based rounds, or geographic units) to reap the benefits of greater physician-nurse communication, increased efficiency, and more personalized patient care, others have dismissed the idea. They believe that although the benefits look nice on paper, unit-based rounds just don’t fit their program’s culture. “People like the idea, but changing the culture seems daunting to them, so they don’t try it,” says Burke Kealey, MD, FHM, associate medical director of Health Partners, headquartered in Minneapolis.

 

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Medical Staff Briefing.

Most Popular

Related Articles