'Modest' benefits seen with use of hospitalists

摘要

As the use of hospitalists continues to grow, the ability to demonstrate the benefits of having these professionals on staff also grows in importance. Accordingly, the findings of a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine~1 should be of particular interest to quality managers. The study does not demonstrate the dnimatic benefits many would have hoped. Compared with patients who were cared for by general internists, patients in the study had what the authors called "modestly" shorter hospital stays - specifically, about 0.4 fewer days per patient - as well as lower costs (an average of