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If there’s one thing hospital medicine is not, it’s static. And that’s truer today than it’s ever been in the more than 20 years since the field came into existence: As the role of hospitalists continue to expand, it’s now in the setting of a rapidly changing health care scene.
So when Society of Hospital Medicine CEO Larry Wellikson, MD, MHM, takes the annual conference podium this morning for his talk on “Future Challenges for Hospital Medicine,” he’ll have a lot to cover.
His overall message, though, will boil down to this: Learn the skills you’ll need.
With hospitalists managing acute and palliative care and being involved in surgical comanagement, many may need additional training.
“There’s a blurring of our role as we link to the emergency department or critical care units, or even a blurring of where does inpatient care end and outpatient care begin?” he said. “Many of these roles hospitalists haven’t been completely trained for.” He’ll also remind the audience that one of SHM’s main roles is to help provide that training.
He said the urgency of learning new skills is only intensified by the health care field’s transition from volume-based payment to value-based payment and by consolidation of previously separate pieces of the landscape, such as the acquisition of Aetna by CVS, with its nearly 10,000 pharmacy locations and more than 1,000 MinuteClinics.
“The real cost for them is hospitalization,” Dr. Wellikson said. “Any money they spend on hospitalization is money they don’t have left over. That puts pressure on hospitalists.”
And it could mean a role shift.
“Maybe our role now becomes that we see that patient after they leave the hospital to make sure that we complete their hospital care and keep them moving in the right direction, because we don’t want them to bounce back into our hospital,” he said.
On whether all the changes in health care are good or bad for hospitalists, Dr. Wellikson said that “good is a relative term.”
“The most important thing in life is to be relevant and to be needed,” he said. “As you add on new things, you have to acquire those competencies. That’s the challenge.”
Dr. Wellikson will also discuss the expansion of hospital medicine and SHM internationally.
“We’re now working with hospitalists in Japan, in Brazil, in Holland, in Canada,” he said. “We’re working in England and Singapore. And each of these places is different.”
His talk will dovetail with a theme that is more prominent in the annual conference program this year: helping hospitalists in mid-career navigate new opportunities.
“The good news on career development is you have so many different directions you can go,” said Dr. Wellikson, pointing to hospitalists who’ve become CEOs and CMOs. But he added that these opportunities require new skills, which goes back to the importance of training.
As a hospitalist, he said, you have to “make sure that you have the ability to gather the new skills to meet new challenges. Just because you become a manager doesn’t mean that magically you know how to manage. How do you keep your skills up as your scope expands or your opportunities grow? What happens more often in hospital medicine is that hospitalists get promoted into a position that can be overwhelming, which leads to burnout or career problems.”
Future Challenges for Hospital Medicine
Tuesday, 9:35-10:00 a.m.
Palms Ballroom
If there’s one thing hospital medicine is not, it’s static. And that’s truer today than it’s ever been in the more than 20 years since the field came into existence: As the role of hospitalists continue to expand, it’s now in the setting of a rapidly changing health care scene.
So when Society of Hospital Medicine CEO Larry Wellikson, MD, MHM, takes the annual conference podium this morning for his talk on “Future Challenges for Hospital Medicine,” he’ll have a lot to cover.
His overall message, though, will boil down to this: Learn the skills you’ll need.
With hospitalists managing acute and palliative care and being involved in surgical comanagement, many may need additional training.
“There’s a blurring of our role as we link to the emergency department or critical care units, or even a blurring of where does inpatient care end and outpatient care begin?” he said. “Many of these roles hospitalists haven’t been completely trained for.” He’ll also remind the audience that one of SHM’s main roles is to help provide that training.
He said the urgency of learning new skills is only intensified by the health care field’s transition from volume-based payment to value-based payment and by consolidation of previously separate pieces of the landscape, such as the acquisition of Aetna by CVS, with its nearly 10,000 pharmacy locations and more than 1,000 MinuteClinics.
“The real cost for them is hospitalization,” Dr. Wellikson said. “Any money they spend on hospitalization is money they don’t have left over. That puts pressure on hospitalists.”
And it could mean a role shift.
“Maybe our role now becomes that we see that patient after they leave the hospital to make sure that we complete their hospital care and keep them moving in the right direction, because we don’t want them to bounce back into our hospital,” he said.
On whether all the changes in health care are good or bad for hospitalists, Dr. Wellikson said that “good is a relative term.”
“The most important thing in life is to be relevant and to be needed,” he said. “As you add on new things, you have to acquire those competencies. That’s the challenge.”
Dr. Wellikson will also discuss the expansion of hospital medicine and SHM internationally.
“We’re now working with hospitalists in Japan, in Brazil, in Holland, in Canada,” he said. “We’re working in England and Singapore. And each of these places is different.”
His talk will dovetail with a theme that is more prominent in the annual conference program this year: helping hospitalists in mid-career navigate new opportunities.
“The good news on career development is you have so many different directions you can go,” said Dr. Wellikson, pointing to hospitalists who’ve become CEOs and CMOs. But he added that these opportunities require new skills, which goes back to the importance of training.
As a hospitalist, he said, you have to “make sure that you have the ability to gather the new skills to meet new challenges. Just because you become a manager doesn’t mean that magically you know how to manage. How do you keep your skills up as your scope expands or your opportunities grow? What happens more often in hospital medicine is that hospitalists get promoted into a position that can be overwhelming, which leads to burnout or career problems.”
Future Challenges for Hospital Medicine
Tuesday, 9:35-10:00 a.m.
Palms Ballroom
If there’s one thing hospital medicine is not, it’s static. And that’s truer today than it’s ever been in the more than 20 years since the field came into existence: As the role of hospitalists continue to expand, it’s now in the setting of a rapidly changing health care scene.
So when Society of Hospital Medicine CEO Larry Wellikson, MD, MHM, takes the annual conference podium this morning for his talk on “Future Challenges for Hospital Medicine,” he’ll have a lot to cover.
His overall message, though, will boil down to this: Learn the skills you’ll need.
With hospitalists managing acute and palliative care and being involved in surgical comanagement, many may need additional training.
“There’s a blurring of our role as we link to the emergency department or critical care units, or even a blurring of where does inpatient care end and outpatient care begin?” he said. “Many of these roles hospitalists haven’t been completely trained for.” He’ll also remind the audience that one of SHM’s main roles is to help provide that training.
He said the urgency of learning new skills is only intensified by the health care field’s transition from volume-based payment to value-based payment and by consolidation of previously separate pieces of the landscape, such as the acquisition of Aetna by CVS, with its nearly 10,000 pharmacy locations and more than 1,000 MinuteClinics.
“The real cost for them is hospitalization,” Dr. Wellikson said. “Any money they spend on hospitalization is money they don’t have left over. That puts pressure on hospitalists.”
And it could mean a role shift.
“Maybe our role now becomes that we see that patient after they leave the hospital to make sure that we complete their hospital care and keep them moving in the right direction, because we don’t want them to bounce back into our hospital,” he said.
On whether all the changes in health care are good or bad for hospitalists, Dr. Wellikson said that “good is a relative term.”
“The most important thing in life is to be relevant and to be needed,” he said. “As you add on new things, you have to acquire those competencies. That’s the challenge.”
Dr. Wellikson will also discuss the expansion of hospital medicine and SHM internationally.
“We’re now working with hospitalists in Japan, in Brazil, in Holland, in Canada,” he said. “We’re working in England and Singapore. And each of these places is different.”
His talk will dovetail with a theme that is more prominent in the annual conference program this year: helping hospitalists in mid-career navigate new opportunities.
“The good news on career development is you have so many different directions you can go,” said Dr. Wellikson, pointing to hospitalists who’ve become CEOs and CMOs. But he added that these opportunities require new skills, which goes back to the importance of training.
As a hospitalist, he said, you have to “make sure that you have the ability to gather the new skills to meet new challenges. Just because you become a manager doesn’t mean that magically you know how to manage. How do you keep your skills up as your scope expands or your opportunities grow? What happens more often in hospital medicine is that hospitalists get promoted into a position that can be overwhelming, which leads to burnout or career problems.”
Future Challenges for Hospital Medicine
Tuesday, 9:35-10:00 a.m.
Palms Ballroom