In many hospitals, hospitalists are like sojourners, moving to wherever they need to be. On average, hospitalists spend 5% of their day simply walking from one part of the hospital to another without actually doing any work, says Eric Siegal, MD, a fellow in critical care medicine at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison, who conducted a survey of his 400-bed facility.

Quality improvement (QI) requires enormous amounts of painstaking work, so much so that QI leaders in small hospitals can be excused for feeling as though their heads are spinning, says Donald Krause, MD, medical director of QI at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor, ME. QI is crucially important and all-encompassing. That’s where hospitalists come in.