Today started early because I was being the hospitalist as well as the stress test doctor as well as my usual identity as primary care physician. A hospitalist is a doctor who takes care of all of the patients in a hospital who have no other doctor or whose doctor doesn't take care of patients in a hospital. It is a fine job, as it is practiced in many larger communities, though it limits the doctor's ability to make long term connections with patients, who usually see someone else when they are not confined to a hospital. People who take hospitalist jobs work shifts, make a fixed salary and get lots of time off. In our small town, the hospitalist is my long suffering partner, nearly all of the time, but I and my other internal medicine colleagues spell her evenings and weekends and occasional vacations. We all squeeze our hospital work into a day that also includes outpatient primary care medicine. As the hospitalist I had 6 patients to see before clinic started at 10, only...
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.