Summary

Description

The number of physicians working as hospitalists is thought to have increased dramatically since the term emerged in 1990. In Use of Hospitalists by Medicare Beneficiaries, A National Picture, the authors developed the MD-PPAS database, in which they identified hospitalists as physicians trained in primary care who billed at least 90 percent of their total charges in a year for Medicare in inpatient settings. Their findings, published in Volume 4, Issue 2 of Medicare and Medicaid Research Review, show that hospitalists made up 4.4 percent of all physicians serving Medicare beneficiaries in 2011 and 13.3 percent of primary care physicians. Over a quarter of Medicare admissions had a hospitalist as the attending physician, though the rate was much higher for medical than surgical admissions (32 percent versus 11 percent). Between 2009 and 2011, medical admissions with a hospitalist attending increased from 26 percent to 32 percent. The ability to identify hospitalists from claims data will help research on the impact of hospitalist use on quality and cost.