Medical Staff

Ask the expert: How many FTEs should we include in our hospitalist program?

Medical Staff Leader Insider, June 21, 2012

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Determining your organization's staffing needs and the costs associated with a hospitalist group can be tricky. There is a lot of literature available that describes the typical recommended patient load for an FTE hospitalist; this literature provides an average number of patients that a physician, physician's assistant, or nurse practitioner should be responsible for on any given shift. Using those numbers and the average daily census of the hospital, an organization should be able to determine how to staff daytime and overnight shifts, says Peter Short, MD, senior vice president of medical affairs at Beverly (Mass.) Hospital.

When calculating how many FTEs your hospitalist program will need, take into consideration whether the hospitalists will round and/or admit patients, whether they will  care for ICU patients, and whether they will work at night,. Also consider the peak ED hours for your hospital. ED admissions, which disrupt the normal patient flow, are critical to the calculation. Short recommends examining records to determine when the ED is busiest, and adding staff throughout the hospital during those hours to move patients out of the ED.

This week’s question and answer are from Medical Staff Briefings, HCPro, Inc.’s monthly newsletter dedicated to meeting the challenges of the evolving medical staff.



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