Practice Management

It could be argued that hospital medicine in the United States was made vital by a major infectious disease epidemic – the HIV/AIDS crisis – said Emily Gottenborg, MD, a hospitalist and program director of hospitalist training at the University of Colorado at Denver, Aurora. Certainly, it was born out of the need for change, for physicians who could coordinate complex patient care plans and serve as the “quarterbacks” of the hospital. “As a result, we have always been very nimble and ready to embrace change,” said Dr. Gottenborg.

That hospitalist-honed agility and penchant for innovation has proven to be invaluable during the current COVID-19 pandemic as hospital medicine–focused residency programs have been forced to pivot quickly and modify their agendas. From managing the pandemic’s impact on residents’ day-to-day experiences, to carefully balancing educational needs and goals, program leaders have worked tirelessly to ensure that residents continue to receive excellent training.

The overarching theme across U.S.-based residency programs is that the educational changes and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic have often been one and the same.
 

Service versus education

At the beginning of the pandemic, trainees at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center were limited in seeing COVID patients in order to curb exposure. But now that COVID appears to be the new normal, “I think the question becomes: ‘How do we incorporate our trainees to take care of COVID patients since it seems it will be staying around for a while?’ ” said Rachna Rawal, MD, a hospitalist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at UPMC.

Mark Bolster ©UPMC All rights reserved.

This dilemma highlights the conflict between service and education. Residents have been motivated and eager to help, which has been beneficial whenever there is a surge. “At the same time, you want to preserve their education, and it’s a very difficult balance at times,” said Dr. Rawal. It’s also challenging to figure out the safest way for residents to see patients, as well as how to include medical students, since interns and residents serve as important educational resources for them.

Keeping trainees involved with daily virtual conferences rather than in-person interactions raises the question of whether or not the engagement is equivalent. “It’s harder to keep them accountable when they’re not in person, but it’s also not worth the risk given the COVID numbers at times,” Dr. Rawal said. The goal has become to make sure residents stay safe while still feeling that they are getting a good education.
 

A balancing act

“I think early on, there was a lot of pride in what we were doing, that we were on the front line managing this thing that was emerging,” said Daniel Ricotta, MD, a hospitalist and associate program director of the internal medicine residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. “And now I think people are starting to feel a little bit weary.”

It has been demanding trying to manage ongoing educational needs through this time. “At the end of the day, residents are still trainees and have to be trained and educated. They’re not just worker bees taking care of patients,” Dr. Ricotta said. Residents need a well-rounded clinical experience – “they can’t just take care of COVID patients and then be able to graduate as general internists,” he said – but that becomes onerous when the hospital is full of patients with COVID.

Along with balancing residents’ clinical immersion, Dr. Ricotta said there has been the challenge of doing “the content-based teaching from didactics that occur in the context of clinical work, but are somewhat separated when you need to limit the number of people in the rooms and try to keep as many people at home as possible when they’re not taking care of patients in order to limit their level of risk.” Adjusting and readjusting both of these aspects has had a major impact on residents’ day-to-day education.

“A big part of residency is community,” noted Dr. Ricotta, but the sense of community has been disrupted because some of the bonding experiences residents used to do outside the hospital to build that community have necessarily gone by the wayside. This particularly affects interns from around the country who are meeting each other for the first time. “We actually had a normal intern orientation this year, but last year, when everything was virtual, we were trying to find ways to bridge relationships in a way that was safe and socially distanced,” he said.
 

Improving quality

UC Denver is unique in that they have a 3-year program specifically for hospital medicine residents, said Dr. Gottenborg. Right away, “our residents rose to the challenge and wanted to be part of the workforce that helps care for this critical population of [COVID] patients.” The residents were able to run the ICUs and take care of COVID patients, but in exchange, they had to give up some of their elective rotation time.

One aspect of the UC Denver hospital medicine residency program is participation in projects that focus on how to improve the health care system. Over the past year, the residents worked on one project in particular that focused on restructuring the guidelines for consulting physical therapists. Since many patients end up needing a physical therapist for a variety of reasons, a full hospital puts increased strain on their workload, making their time more precious.

“[The project] forced us to think about the right criteria to consult them,” explained Dr. Gottenborg. “We cut down essentially all the inappropriate consults to PT, opening their time. That project was driven by how the residents were experiencing the pandemic in the hospital.”
 

Learning to adapt

“The training environment during this pandemic has been tumultuous for both our residents and medical students,” said Alan M. Hall, MD, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics and assistant dean of curriculum integration at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Along with treating patients with COVID-19, he said trainees have also had to cope with anxiety about getting the virus themselves or inadvertently bringing it home to their families.

Like most medical schools, University of Kentucky students were shifted away from clinical rotations and into alternative and online education for a time. When they returned to in-person education, the students were initially restricted from seeing patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 in order to reduce their personal risk and to conserve personal protective equipment.

This especially impacted certain rotations, such as pediatrics. Because respiratory symptoms are common in this population, students were greatly limited in the number of new patients they could see. Now they are given the option to see patients with COVID-19 if they want to.

“Our residents have had to adapt to seemingly endless changes during this pandemic,” Dr. Hall said. For example, at the beginning of the surge, the internal medicine residents trained for a completely new clinical model, though this ultimately never needed to be implemented. Then they had to adjust to extremely high census numbers that continue to have an effect on almost all of their rotations.

Conversely, the pediatrics residents saw far fewer inpatients last winter than they typically would. This made it more difficult for them to feel comfortable when census numbers increased with common diagnoses like bronchiolitis. “However, those respiratory viruses that were hibernating last winter caused an unusual and challenging summer surge,” Dr. Hall said.

The biggest challenge though “is knowing that there is not a perfect solution for this global pandemic’s effect on medical education,” said Dr. Hall. “We can’t possibly perfectly balance the safety of our learners and their families with the dangers of COVID-19.”
 

Leadership discussions

As a residency program leader, Dr. Ricotta said there are conversations about multiple topics, including maintaining a safe learning environment; providing important aspects of residency training; whether to go back to full in-person teaching, keep doing virtual teaching, or implement a hybrid model; and how to help residents understand the balance between their personal and professional lives, especially in terms of safety.

“They have to their lives outside of the hospital, but we also are trying to instill ... what their responsibility is to society, to their patients, and to each other,” said Dr. Ricotta.

A more recent discussion has been about how to manage the COVID vaccine boosters. “We can’t have everyone getting vaccines at the same time because they might have symptoms afterward, and then be out sick – you’re missing half your workforce,” Dr. Ricotta said. But staggering residents’ booster shots created yet another dilemma around deciding who received the booster sooner rather than later.

The biggest consideration for Dr. Gottenborg’s leadership team was deciding whether to use their residents to help with the COVID surges or keep them in a traditional residency experience. While the residents wanted to be part of the pandemic response, there were many factors to consider. Ultimately, they came up with a balance between the amount of time residents should spend taking care of COVID patients while also assuring that they leave the program with all the skills and experiences they need.

Though Dr. Hall works more closely with medical students than residents, he sees the challenges and effects as being similar. Creating harmony between a safe learning environment and students’ educational goals has been the topic of endless discussions. This includes decisions as to whether or not students should be involved in person in certain activities such as large classroom didactics, written exams, seeing patients in clinical settings, and small group discussions.
 

Recruitment effects

When it comes to recruiting during a global pandemic, the experiences and predictions are mixed. Dr. Hall believes virtual interviews are making recruitment easier, but in turn, the fact that they are virtual also makes it harder for the applicant to get a good feel for the program and the people involved in it.

Dr. Ricotta reported that recruitment numbers have been fairly steady at Beth Israel Deaconess over the last few years. “In addition to the critical care physicians, hospital medicine was really the front line of this pandemic and so in some ways, we gained some recognition that we may not have had otherwise,” said Dr. Ricotta. He believes this has the benefit of attracting some residents, but at the same time, it could potentially scare others away from what they perceive as a demanding, grueling job. “I think it has been mixed. It’s dependent on the person.”

At UC Denver, Dr. Gottenborg said they are seeing a rapid rise in the number of applications and interest in their programs. Still, “I think this could go both ways,” she acknowledged. With the focus on hospital medicine in the media, medical students are more aware of the specialty and what it involves. “I think the sense of mission is really exemplified and everyone is talking about it,” she said. This is evident in the arrival this summer of the first new class of interns since the pandemic. “They’re incredibly passionate about the work,” said Dr. Gottenborg.

However, there is also the notable increase in physician burnout since the pandemic started. That this has been regularly featured in the media leaves Dr. Gottenborg to wonder if prospective residents will shy away from hospital medicine because they believe it is an area that leads to burnout. “I hope that’s not the case,” she said.

“I would actually argue [recruitment] is easier,” said Dr. Rawal. Like Dr. Hall, she sees virtual interviews as a big benefit to prospective trainees because they don’t have to spend a large amount of money on travel, food, and other expenses like they did before, a welcome relief for residents with significant debt. “I think that is one very big positive from the pandemic,” she said. Her trainees were advised to make a final list and consider going to see the top two or three in person, but “at this point, there’s really no expectation to go see all 15 places that you look into.”

Dr. Rawal also pointed out that recruitment is affected by whether or not trainees are expected to see COVID patients. “I know in some places they aren’t and in some places they are, so it just depends on where you are and what you’re looking for,” she said.
 

Shifts in education

It remains to be seen if all the educational changes will be permanent, though it appears that many will remain. Dr. Hall hopes that virtual visits to provide care to patients who have difficulty getting to physical clinics will continue to be a focus for hospital medicine trainees. “For medical students, I think this will allow us to better assess what content can best be delivered in person, synchronously online, or asynchronously through recorded content,” he said.

Dr. Ricotta predicts that virtual conferences will become more pervasive as academic hospitals continue to acquire more community hospitals, especially for grand rounds. “The virtual teaching that occurred in the residency program because it’s required by the [Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education] has, I think, informed how academic centers do ongoing faculty development, professional development, and obviously education for the residents,” Dr. Ricotta said. “I think virtual teaching is here to stay.” This includes telehealth training, which had not been a widespread part of residency education before now.

Trainees have been given tools to handle high patient censuses and learned a whole new set of communication skills, thanks to the pandemic, said Dr. Rawal. There has been a focus on learning how to advocate for the vaccine, along with education on situations like how to have conversations with patients who don’t believe they have COVID, even when their tests are positive. “Learning to handle these situations and still be a physician and provide appropriate care regardless of the patient’s views is very important. This is not something I learned in my training because it never came up,” she said.

Dr. Gottenborg has been impressed by the resident workforce’s response across all specialties throughout these difficult days. “They were universally ready to dive in and work long hours and care for these very sick patients and ultimately share their experiences so that we could do it better as these patients continue to flow through our systems,” she said. “It has been very invigorating.”

The pandemic has also put a spotlight on the importance of being flexible, as well as various problems with how health care systems operate, “which, for people in our field, gets us both excited and gives us a lot of work to do,” said Dr. Gottenborg. “Our residents see that and feel that and will hopefully continue to hold that torch in hospital medicine.”

In spite of everything, Dr. Rawal believes this is an exhilarating time to be a trainee. “They’re getting an opportunity that none of us got. Usually, when policies are made, we really don’t see the immediate impact.” But with recent mandates like masks and social distancing, “the rate of change that they get to see things happen is exciting. They’re going to be a very exciting group of physicians.”

It could be argued that hospital medicine in the United States was made vital by a major infectious disease epidemic – the HIV/AIDS crisis – said Emily Gottenborg, MD, a hospitalist and program director of hospitalist training at the University of Colorado at Denver, Aurora. Certainly, it was born out of the need for change, for physicians who could coordinate complex patient care plans and serve as the “quarterbacks” of the hospital. “As a result, we have always been very nimble and ready to embrace change,” said Dr. Gottenborg.

That hospitalist-honed agility and penchant for innovation has proven to be invaluable during the current COVID-19 pandemic as hospital medicine–focused residency programs have been forced to pivot quickly and modify their agendas. From managing the pandemic’s impact on residents’ day-to-day experiences, to carefully balancing educational needs and goals, program leaders have worked tirelessly to ensure that residents continue to receive excellent training.

The overarching theme across U.S.-based residency programs is that the educational changes and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic have often been one and the same.
 

Service versus education

At the beginning of the pandemic, trainees at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center were limited in seeing COVID patients in order to curb exposure. But now that COVID appears to be the new normal, “I think the question becomes: ‘How do we incorporate our trainees to take care of COVID patients since it seems it will be staying around for a while?’ ” said Rachna Rawal, MD, a hospitalist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at UPMC.

Mark Bolster ©UPMC All rights reserved.

This dilemma highlights the conflict between service and education. Residents have been motivated and eager to help, which has been beneficial whenever there is a surge. “At the same time, you want to preserve their education, and it’s a very difficult balance at times,” said Dr. Rawal. It’s also challenging to figure out the safest way for residents to see patients, as well as how to include medical students, since interns and residents serve as important educational resources for them.

Keeping trainees involved with daily virtual conferences rather than in-person interactions raises the question of whether or not the engagement is equivalent. “It’s harder to keep them accountable when they’re not in person, but it’s also not worth the risk given the COVID numbers at times,” Dr. Rawal said. The goal has become to make sure residents stay safe while still feeling that they are getting a good education.
 

A balancing act

“I think early on, there was a lot of pride in what we were doing, that we were on the front line managing this thing that was emerging,” said Daniel Ricotta, MD, a hospitalist and associate program director of the internal medicine residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. “And now I think people are starting to feel a little bit weary.”

It has been demanding trying to manage ongoing educational needs through this time. “At the end of the day, residents are still trainees and have to be trained and educated. They’re not just worker bees taking care of patients,” Dr. Ricotta said. Residents need a well-rounded clinical experience – “they can’t just take care of COVID patients and then be able to graduate as general internists,” he said – but that becomes onerous when the hospital is full of patients with COVID.

Along with balancing residents’ clinical immersion, Dr. Ricotta said there has been the challenge of doing “the content-based teaching from didactics that occur in the context of clinical work, but are somewhat separated when you need to limit the number of people in the rooms and try to keep as many people at home as possible when they’re not taking care of patients in order to limit their level of risk.” Adjusting and readjusting both of these aspects has had a major impact on residents’ day-to-day education.

“A big part of residency is community,” noted Dr. Ricotta, but the sense of community has been disrupted because some of the bonding experiences residents used to do outside the hospital to build that community have necessarily gone by the wayside. This particularly affects interns from around the country who are meeting each other for the first time. “We actually had a normal intern orientation this year, but last year, when everything was virtual, we were trying to find ways to bridge relationships in a way that was safe and socially distanced,” he said.
 

Improving quality

UC Denver is unique in that they have a 3-year program specifically for hospital medicine residents, said Dr. Gottenborg. Right away, “our residents rose to the challenge and wanted to be part of the workforce that helps care for this critical population of [COVID] patients.” The residents were able to run the ICUs and take care of COVID patients, but in exchange, they had to give up some of their elective rotation time.

One aspect of the UC Denver hospital medicine residency program is participation in projects that focus on how to improve the health care system. Over the past year, the residents worked on one project in particular that focused on restructuring the guidelines for consulting physical therapists. Since many patients end up needing a physical therapist for a variety of reasons, a full hospital puts increased strain on their workload, making their time more precious.

“[The project] forced us to think about the right criteria to consult them,” explained Dr. Gottenborg. “We cut down essentially all the inappropriate consults to PT, opening their time. That project was driven by how the residents were experiencing the pandemic in the hospital.”
 

Learning to adapt

“The training environment during this pandemic has been tumultuous for both our residents and medical students,” said Alan M. Hall, MD, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics and assistant dean of curriculum integration at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Along with treating patients with COVID-19, he said trainees have also had to cope with anxiety about getting the virus themselves or inadvertently bringing it home to their families.

Like most medical schools, University of Kentucky students were shifted away from clinical rotations and into alternative and online education for a time. When they returned to in-person education, the students were initially restricted from seeing patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 in order to reduce their personal risk and to conserve personal protective equipment.

This especially impacted certain rotations, such as pediatrics. Because respiratory symptoms are common in this population, students were greatly limited in the number of new patients they could see. Now they are given the option to see patients with COVID-19 if they want to.

“Our residents have had to adapt to seemingly endless changes during this pandemic,” Dr. Hall said. For example, at the beginning of the surge, the internal medicine residents trained for a completely new clinical model, though this ultimately never needed to be implemented. Then they had to adjust to extremely high census numbers that continue to have an effect on almost all of their rotations.

Conversely, the pediatrics residents saw far fewer inpatients last winter than they typically would. This made it more difficult for them to feel comfortable when census numbers increased with common diagnoses like bronchiolitis. “However, those respiratory viruses that were hibernating last winter caused an unusual and challenging summer surge,” Dr. Hall said.

The biggest challenge though “is knowing that there is not a perfect solution for this global pandemic’s effect on medical education,” said Dr. Hall. “We can’t possibly perfectly balance the safety of our learners and their families with the dangers of COVID-19.”
 

Leadership discussions

As a residency program leader, Dr. Ricotta said there are conversations about multiple topics, including maintaining a safe learning environment; providing important aspects of residency training; whether to go back to full in-person teaching, keep doing virtual teaching, or implement a hybrid model; and how to help residents understand the balance between their personal and professional lives, especially in terms of safety.

“They have to their lives outside of the hospital, but we also are trying to instill ... what their responsibility is to society, to their patients, and to each other,” said Dr. Ricotta.

A more recent discussion has been about how to manage the COVID vaccine boosters. “We can’t have everyone getting vaccines at the same time because they might have symptoms afterward, and then be out sick – you’re missing half your workforce,” Dr. Ricotta said. But staggering residents’ booster shots created yet another dilemma around deciding who received the booster sooner rather than later.

The biggest consideration for Dr. Gottenborg’s leadership team was deciding whether to use their residents to help with the COVID surges or keep them in a traditional residency experience. While the residents wanted to be part of the pandemic response, there were many factors to consider. Ultimately, they came up with a balance between the amount of time residents should spend taking care of COVID patients while also assuring that they leave the program with all the skills and experiences they need.

Though Dr. Hall works more closely with medical students than residents, he sees the challenges and effects as being similar. Creating harmony between a safe learning environment and students’ educational goals has been the topic of endless discussions. This includes decisions as to whether or not students should be involved in person in certain activities such as large classroom didactics, written exams, seeing patients in clinical settings, and small group discussions.
 

Recruitment effects

When it comes to recruiting during a global pandemic, the experiences and predictions are mixed. Dr. Hall believes virtual interviews are making recruitment easier, but in turn, the fact that they are virtual also makes it harder for the applicant to get a good feel for the program and the people involved in it.

Dr. Ricotta reported that recruitment numbers have been fairly steady at Beth Israel Deaconess over the last few years. “In addition to the critical care physicians, hospital medicine was really the front line of this pandemic and so in some ways, we gained some recognition that we may not have had otherwise,” said Dr. Ricotta. He believes this has the benefit of attracting some residents, but at the same time, it could potentially scare others away from what they perceive as a demanding, grueling job. “I think it has been mixed. It’s dependent on the person.”

At UC Denver, Dr. Gottenborg said they are seeing a rapid rise in the number of applications and interest in their programs. Still, “I think this could go both ways,” she acknowledged. With the focus on hospital medicine in the media, medical students are more aware of the specialty and what it involves. “I think the sense of mission is really exemplified and everyone is talking about it,” she said. This is evident in the arrival this summer of the first new class of interns since the pandemic. “They’re incredibly passionate about the work,” said Dr. Gottenborg.

However, there is also the notable increase in physician burnout since the pandemic started. That this has been regularly featured in the media leaves Dr. Gottenborg to wonder if prospective residents will shy away from hospital medicine because they believe it is an area that leads to burnout. “I hope that’s not the case,” she said.

“I would actually argue [recruitment] is easier,” said Dr. Rawal. Like Dr. Hall, she sees virtual interviews as a big benefit to prospective trainees because they don’t have to spend a large amount of money on travel, food, and other expenses like they did before, a welcome relief for residents with significant debt. “I think that is one very big positive from the pandemic,” she said. Her trainees were advised to make a final list and consider going to see the top two or three in person, but “at this point, there’s really no expectation to go see all 15 places that you look into.”

Dr. Rawal also pointed out that recruitment is affected by whether or not trainees are expected to see COVID patients. “I know in some places they aren’t and in some places they are, so it just depends on where you are and what you’re looking for,” she said.
 

Shifts in education

It remains to be seen if all the educational changes will be permanent, though it appears that many will remain. Dr. Hall hopes that virtual visits to provide care to patients who have difficulty getting to physical clinics will continue to be a focus for hospital medicine trainees. “For medical students, I think this will allow us to better assess what content can best be delivered in person, synchronously online, or asynchronously through recorded content,” he said.

Dr. Ricotta predicts that virtual conferences will become more pervasive as academic hospitals continue to acquire more community hospitals, especially for grand rounds. “The virtual teaching that occurred in the residency program because it’s required by the [Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education] has, I think, informed how academic centers do ongoing faculty development, professional development, and obviously education for the residents,” Dr. Ricotta said. “I think virtual teaching is here to stay.” This includes telehealth training, which had not been a widespread part of residency education before now.

Trainees have been given tools to handle high patient censuses and learned a whole new set of communication skills, thanks to the pandemic, said Dr. Rawal. There has been a focus on learning how to advocate for the vaccine, along with education on situations like how to have conversations with patients who don’t believe they have COVID, even when their tests are positive. “Learning to handle these situations and still be a physician and provide appropriate care regardless of the patient’s views is very important. This is not something I learned in my training because it never came up,” she said.

Dr. Gottenborg has been impressed by the resident workforce’s response across all specialties throughout these difficult days. “They were universally ready to dive in and work long hours and care for these very sick patients and ultimately share their experiences so that we could do it better as these patients continue to flow through our systems,” she said. “It has been very invigorating.”

The pandemic has also put a spotlight on the importance of being flexible, as well as various problems with how health care systems operate, “which, for people in our field, gets us both excited and gives us a lot of work to do,” said Dr. Gottenborg. “Our residents see that and feel that and will hopefully continue to hold that torch in hospital medicine.”

In spite of everything, Dr. Rawal believes this is an exhilarating time to be a trainee. “They’re getting an opportunity that none of us got. Usually, when policies are made, we really don’t see the immediate impact.” But with recent mandates like masks and social distancing, “the rate of change that they get to see things happen is exciting. They’re going to be a very exciting group of physicians.”

It could be argued that hospital medicine in the United States was made vital by a major infectious disease epidemic – the HIV/AIDS crisis – said Emily Gottenborg, MD, a hospitalist and program director of hospitalist training at the University of Colorado at Denver, Aurora. Certainly, it was born out of the need for change, for physicians who could coordinate complex patient care plans and serve as the “quarterbacks” of the hospital. “As a result, we have always been very nimble and ready to embrace change,” said Dr. Gottenborg.

That hospitalist-honed agility and penchant for innovation has proven to be invaluable during the current COVID-19 pandemic as hospital medicine–focused residency programs have been forced to pivot quickly and modify their agendas. From managing the pandemic’s impact on residents’ day-to-day experiences, to carefully balancing educational needs and goals, program leaders have worked tirelessly to ensure that residents continue to receive excellent training.

The overarching theme across U.S.-based residency programs is that the educational changes and challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic have often been one and the same.
 

Service versus education

At the beginning of the pandemic, trainees at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center were limited in seeing COVID patients in order to curb exposure. But now that COVID appears to be the new normal, “I think the question becomes: ‘How do we incorporate our trainees to take care of COVID patients since it seems it will be staying around for a while?’ ” said Rachna Rawal, MD, a hospitalist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at UPMC.

Mark Bolster ©UPMC All rights reserved.

This dilemma highlights the conflict between service and education. Residents have been motivated and eager to help, which has been beneficial whenever there is a surge. “At the same time, you want to preserve their education, and it’s a very difficult balance at times,” said Dr. Rawal. It’s also challenging to figure out the safest way for residents to see patients, as well as how to include medical students, since interns and residents serve as important educational resources for them.

Keeping trainees involved with daily virtual conferences rather than in-person interactions raises the question of whether or not the engagement is equivalent. “It’s harder to keep them accountable when they’re not in person, but it’s also not worth the risk given the COVID numbers at times,” Dr. Rawal said. The goal has become to make sure residents stay safe while still feeling that they are getting a good education.
 

A balancing act

“I think early on, there was a lot of pride in what we were doing, that we were on the front line managing this thing that was emerging,” said Daniel Ricotta, MD, a hospitalist and associate program director of the internal medicine residency at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, both in Boston. “And now I think people are starting to feel a little bit weary.”

It has been demanding trying to manage ongoing educational needs through this time. “At the end of the day, residents are still trainees and have to be trained and educated. They’re not just worker bees taking care of patients,” Dr. Ricotta said. Residents need a well-rounded clinical experience – “they can’t just take care of COVID patients and then be able to graduate as general internists,” he said – but that becomes onerous when the hospital is full of patients with COVID.

Along with balancing residents’ clinical immersion, Dr. Ricotta said there has been the challenge of doing “the content-based teaching from didactics that occur in the context of clinical work, but are somewhat separated when you need to limit the number of people in the rooms and try to keep as many people at home as possible when they’re not taking care of patients in order to limit their level of risk.” Adjusting and readjusting both of these aspects has had a major impact on residents’ day-to-day education.

“A big part of residency is community,” noted Dr. Ricotta, but the sense of community has been disrupted because some of the bonding experiences residents used to do outside the hospital to build that community have necessarily gone by the wayside. This particularly affects interns from around the country who are meeting each other for the first time. “We actually had a normal intern orientation this year, but last year, when everything was virtual, we were trying to find ways to bridge relationships in a way that was safe and socially distanced,” he said.
 

Improving quality

UC Denver is unique in that they have a 3-year program specifically for hospital medicine residents, said Dr. Gottenborg. Right away, “our residents rose to the challenge and wanted to be part of the workforce that helps care for this critical population of [COVID] patients.” The residents were able to run the ICUs and take care of COVID patients, but in exchange, they had to give up some of their elective rotation time.

One aspect of the UC Denver hospital medicine residency program is participation in projects that focus on how to improve the health care system. Over the past year, the residents worked on one project in particular that focused on restructuring the guidelines for consulting physical therapists. Since many patients end up needing a physical therapist for a variety of reasons, a full hospital puts increased strain on their workload, making their time more precious.

“[The project] forced us to think about the right criteria to consult them,” explained Dr. Gottenborg. “We cut down essentially all the inappropriate consults to PT, opening their time. That project was driven by how the residents were experiencing the pandemic in the hospital.”
 

Learning to adapt

“The training environment during this pandemic has been tumultuous for both our residents and medical students,” said Alan M. Hall, MD, associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics and assistant dean of curriculum integration at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Along with treating patients with COVID-19, he said trainees have also had to cope with anxiety about getting the virus themselves or inadvertently bringing it home to their families.

Like most medical schools, University of Kentucky students were shifted away from clinical rotations and into alternative and online education for a time. When they returned to in-person education, the students were initially restricted from seeing patients with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 in order to reduce their personal risk and to conserve personal protective equipment.

This especially impacted certain rotations, such as pediatrics. Because respiratory symptoms are common in this population, students were greatly limited in the number of new patients they could see. Now they are given the option to see patients with COVID-19 if they want to.

“Our residents have had to adapt to seemingly endless changes during this pandemic,” Dr. Hall said. For example, at the beginning of the surge, the internal medicine residents trained for a completely new clinical model, though this ultimately never needed to be implemented. Then they had to adjust to extremely high census numbers that continue to have an effect on almost all of their rotations.

Conversely, the pediatrics residents saw far fewer inpatients last winter than they typically would. This made it more difficult for them to feel comfortable when census numbers increased with common diagnoses like bronchiolitis. “However, those respiratory viruses that were hibernating last winter caused an unusual and challenging summer surge,” Dr. Hall said.

The biggest challenge though “is knowing that there is not a perfect solution for this global pandemic’s effect on medical education,” said Dr. Hall. “We can’t possibly perfectly balance the safety of our learners and their families with the dangers of COVID-19.”
 

Leadership discussions

As a residency program leader, Dr. Ricotta said there are conversations about multiple topics, including maintaining a safe learning environment; providing important aspects of residency training; whether to go back to full in-person teaching, keep doing virtual teaching, or implement a hybrid model; and how to help residents understand the balance between their personal and professional lives, especially in terms of safety.

“They have to their lives outside of the hospital, but we also are trying to instill ... what their responsibility is to society, to their patients, and to each other,” said Dr. Ricotta.

A more recent discussion has been about how to manage the COVID vaccine boosters. “We can’t have everyone getting vaccines at the same time because they might have symptoms afterward, and then be out sick – you’re missing half your workforce,” Dr. Ricotta said. But staggering residents’ booster shots created yet another dilemma around deciding who received the booster sooner rather than later.

The biggest consideration for Dr. Gottenborg’s leadership team was deciding whether to use their residents to help with the COVID surges or keep them in a traditional residency experience. While the residents wanted to be part of the pandemic response, there were many factors to consider. Ultimately, they came up with a balance between the amount of time residents should spend taking care of COVID patients while also assuring that they leave the program with all the skills and experiences they need.

Though Dr. Hall works more closely with medical students than residents, he sees the challenges and effects as being similar. Creating harmony between a safe learning environment and students’ educational goals has been the topic of endless discussions. This includes decisions as to whether or not students should be involved in person in certain activities such as large classroom didactics, written exams, seeing patients in clinical settings, and small group discussions.
 

Recruitment effects

When it comes to recruiting during a global pandemic, the experiences and predictions are mixed. Dr. Hall believes virtual interviews are making recruitment easier, but in turn, the fact that they are virtual also makes it harder for the applicant to get a good feel for the program and the people involved in it.

Dr. Ricotta reported that recruitment numbers have been fairly steady at Beth Israel Deaconess over the last few years. “In addition to the critical care physicians, hospital medicine was really the front line of this pandemic and so in some ways, we gained some recognition that we may not have had otherwise,” said Dr. Ricotta. He believes this has the benefit of attracting some residents, but at the same time, it could potentially scare others away from what they perceive as a demanding, grueling job. “I think it has been mixed. It’s dependent on the person.”

At UC Denver, Dr. Gottenborg said they are seeing a rapid rise in the number of applications and interest in their programs. Still, “I think this could go both ways,” she acknowledged. With the focus on hospital medicine in the media, medical students are more aware of the specialty and what it involves. “I think the sense of mission is really exemplified and everyone is talking about it,” she said. This is evident in the arrival this summer of the first new class of interns since the pandemic. “They’re incredibly passionate about the work,” said Dr. Gottenborg.

However, there is also the notable increase in physician burnout since the pandemic started. That this has been regularly featured in the media leaves Dr. Gottenborg to wonder if prospective residents will shy away from hospital medicine because they believe it is an area that leads to burnout. “I hope that’s not the case,” she said.

“I would actually argue [recruitment] is easier,” said Dr. Rawal. Like Dr. Hall, she sees virtual interviews as a big benefit to prospective trainees because they don’t have to spend a large amount of money on travel, food, and other expenses like they did before, a welcome relief for residents with significant debt. “I think that is one very big positive from the pandemic,” she said. Her trainees were advised to make a final list and consider going to see the top two or three in person, but “at this point, there’s really no expectation to go see all 15 places that you look into.”

Dr. Rawal also pointed out that recruitment is affected by whether or not trainees are expected to see COVID patients. “I know in some places they aren’t and in some places they are, so it just depends on where you are and what you’re looking for,” she said.
 

Shifts in education

It remains to be seen if all the educational changes will be permanent, though it appears that many will remain. Dr. Hall hopes that virtual visits to provide care to patients who have difficulty getting to physical clinics will continue to be a focus for hospital medicine trainees. “For medical students, I think this will allow us to better assess what content can best be delivered in person, synchronously online, or asynchronously through recorded content,” he said.

Dr. Ricotta predicts that virtual conferences will become more pervasive as academic hospitals continue to acquire more community hospitals, especially for grand rounds. “The virtual teaching that occurred in the residency program because it’s required by the [Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education] has, I think, informed how academic centers do ongoing faculty development, professional development, and obviously education for the residents,” Dr. Ricotta said. “I think virtual teaching is here to stay.” This includes telehealth training, which had not been a widespread part of residency education before now.

Trainees have been given tools to handle high patient censuses and learned a whole new set of communication skills, thanks to the pandemic, said Dr. Rawal. There has been a focus on learning how to advocate for the vaccine, along with education on situations like how to have conversations with patients who don’t believe they have COVID, even when their tests are positive. “Learning to handle these situations and still be a physician and provide appropriate care regardless of the patient’s views is very important. This is not something I learned in my training because it never came up,” she said.

Dr. Gottenborg has been impressed by the resident workforce’s response across all specialties throughout these difficult days. “They were universally ready to dive in and work long hours and care for these very sick patients and ultimately share their experiences so that we could do it better as these patients continue to flow through our systems,” she said. “It has been very invigorating.”

The pandemic has also put a spotlight on the importance of being flexible, as well as various problems with how health care systems operate, “which, for people in our field, gets us both excited and gives us a lot of work to do,” said Dr. Gottenborg. “Our residents see that and feel that and will hopefully continue to hold that torch in hospital medicine.”

In spite of everything, Dr. Rawal believes this is an exhilarating time to be a trainee. “They’re getting an opportunity that none of us got. Usually, when policies are made, we really don’t see the immediate impact.” But with recent mandates like masks and social distancing, “the rate of change that they get to see things happen is exciting. They’re going to be a very exciting group of physicians.”

COVID-19’s relentless toll on the clinical workforce inspired four doctors to draft an action plan to stem the exits and help colleagues preserve their physical and mental health.

Indeed, a recent poll of 1,000 health care workers conducted Sept. 2-8 by Morning Consult, showed that 18% of medical workers polled quit their jobs during the pandemic. Additionally, 31% said they had at least thought about leaving their work.

“As physicians, educators, peers and friends of COVID-19 responders, we are gravely concerned about our colleagues’ exhaustion, burnout, and disillusionment,” wrote lead author Eileen Barrett, MD, and coauthors of the new action plan, which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The 10-point, one-page checklist includes providing “practical support in the areas that clinicians identify as causing emotional stress or moral injury,” such as managing anger and grief when patients have chosen not to be vaccinated or confronting misinformation.

“Those are the things that are making people’s mental health worse” psychiatrist Jessi Gold, MD, MS, said in an interview. “I don’t think I’ve seen that mentioned other places.”

Among the other action items are:

• Reduce administrative tasks that are not “mission critical,” such as mandatory training that has no evidence of improving patient outcomes and meetings that could be skipped.
• Offer free and confidential resources to support clinicians’ mental health, such as easy access to crisis hotlines and peer support groups.
• Maintain transparency about personal protective equipment and contingency plans when there are shortages to restore trust.
• Encourage clinicians to use vacation time; leaders should model this.
• Implement suicide prevention strategies, including wellness check-ins for clinicians in hard-hit areas.

The action plan was based on the authors’ own experiences and the stories of colleagues and information in literature. It includes 10 changes health care leaders could make to help retain providers who may be on the brink of leaving their jobs or leaving medicine

Action items intended to be easily achievable, low cost

Dr. Barrett, who is a hospitalist in Albuquerque, said the goal was to present easily achievable and low-cost action items that clinicians and health care leaders could use as a starting point when change seems insurmountable and evidence on what works is slow to come.

She said one of the things that spurred her to coauthor the list was becoming aware of other clinicians’ “secret shame” in thinking about leaving medicine.

“Maybe a person who is not being listened to could take this journal article and say ‘we don’t know where to start. It looks like we can start here,’ ” said Dr. Barrett, who is also an associate professor in the division of hospital medicine, department of internal medicine, at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

She noted that some of the good ideas floated around did not make the list, because they required daunting budget commitments and too much time to put into place.

Numerous other proposed solutions were of the wrong tone, according to Dr. Barrett.

“It’s not just about a hug or a piece of pizza,” she said.

Dr. Gold, who is an assistant professor at Washington University, St. Louis, and specializes in the mental health of health care workers, noted that, even though the list was pared to 10 action items, it is still hard for health care organizations to prioritize mental health.

“Many hospitals are still struggling with the active bleed of the pandemic and financially recovering,” she said. “If you’re dealing with a full ER and people are still dying of COVID and you don’t have the resources to support them, it’s really hard to then find magic money to deal with mental health. I’d love for that to be true.”

Every organization, however, can start with removing questions about mental and physical health diagnoses from credentialing and employment applications, which is one of the items on the list, she said.

“It’s the lowest-bar thing that you can fix for making people in crisis not fear getting help,” she said. That change must come on a state-by-state and individual hospital level.

Favorable reactions to list

Dr. Barrett, who also serves on the editorial advisory board of Internal Medicine News, said the reactions to the checklist have been “overwhelmingly favorable and appreciative.”

Eric J. Topol, MD, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and editor-in-chief of Medscape Medical News, tweeted about this list: “For COVID-19, more than ever before, it’s vital to keep clinicians in the U.S. health care workforce. These are 10 steps that will help.” The tweet was retweeted more than 100 times.

Lotte Dyrbye, MD, MHPE, a primary care physician and codirector of the program on physician well-being at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said in an interview that managing the anger around patients who choose to be unvaccinated is critical and something that has gotten little notice since the vaccines became available.

“Physicians and nurses are working extremely hard and seeing a lot of suffering and are taking care of patients very sick with COVID-19, knowing they had access to the vaccine. That is causing anger and frustration. We haven’t prepared health care workers to deal with that,” she said.
 

Outside expert: Not all items may be easy to implement

Dr. Dyrbye said that, though she found adding time to address COVID misinformation questions in appointments is very important, it may be wishful thinking.

The authors suggested training other members of the care team to answer those questions to free up time, but she said, for patients who have been swayed by misinformation, hearing information from someone other than the physician they have a relationship with won’t be convincing.

According to Dr. Dyrbye, the items on the list are not easy to implement, but the action plan is worthwhile to consider adopting as a multipronged approach.

“Most of these things are hard and we need to be in it for the long run,” she said.

The need is clear for efforts to address the mental health of not just experienced clinicians but those in training as well, she noted.
 

Related research

A study that was also recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggested that making a few simple changes can help improve the mental health of residents. The research, which included nearly 17,000 first-year residents who started training between 2007 and 2019, addressed indicators of mental health in light of interventions such as limiting residents’ work hours and providing more services.

The investigators found that, though depression remains high among residents, depressive symptoms among first-year residents dropped 24.4% from 2007 to 2019 in parallel with four main factors: an increase in mental health services; restrictions on work hours for residents; more sleep hours; and higher-quality feedback from faculty.

Dr. Barrett said she hopes her colleagues and health care workers everywhere will find some solace in seeing that the new checklist she coauthored was published in a prominent journal.

The message Dr. Barrett said she hopes they see is: “Someone is validating it is not in their head. They are validating we can do better. They are validating that we must.”

Dr. Barrett and coauthors had no conflicts of interest. Dr. Gold and Dr. Dyrbye also disclosed having no relevant financial relationships.

COVID-19’s relentless toll on the clinical workforce inspired four doctors to draft an action plan to stem the exits and help colleagues preserve their physical and mental health.

Indeed, a recent poll of 1,000 health care workers conducted Sept. 2-8 by Morning Consult, showed that 18% of medical workers polled quit their jobs during the pandemic. Additionally, 31% said they had at least thought about leaving their work.

“As physicians, educators, peers and friends of COVID-19 responders, we are gravely concerned about our colleagues’ exhaustion, burnout, and disillusionment,” wrote lead author Eileen Barrett, MD, and coauthors of the new action plan, which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The 10-point, one-page checklist includes providing “practical support in the areas that clinicians identify as causing emotional stress or moral injury,” such as managing anger and grief when patients have chosen not to be vaccinated or confronting misinformation.

“Those are the things that are making people’s mental health worse” psychiatrist Jessi Gold, MD, MS, said in an interview. “I don’t think I’ve seen that mentioned other places.”

Among the other action items are:

• Reduce administrative tasks that are not “mission critical,” such as mandatory training that has no evidence of improving patient outcomes and meetings that could be skipped.
• Offer free and confidential resources to support clinicians’ mental health, such as easy access to crisis hotlines and peer support groups.
• Maintain transparency about personal protective equipment and contingency plans when there are shortages to restore trust.
• Encourage clinicians to use vacation time; leaders should model this.
• Implement suicide prevention strategies, including wellness check-ins for clinicians in hard-hit areas.

The action plan was based on the authors’ own experiences and the stories of colleagues and information in literature. It includes 10 changes health care leaders could make to help retain providers who may be on the brink of leaving their jobs or leaving medicine

Action items intended to be easily achievable, low cost

Dr. Barrett, who is a hospitalist in Albuquerque, said the goal was to present easily achievable and low-cost action items that clinicians and health care leaders could use as a starting point when change seems insurmountable and evidence on what works is slow to come.

She said one of the things that spurred her to coauthor the list was becoming aware of other clinicians’ “secret shame” in thinking about leaving medicine.

“Maybe a person who is not being listened to could take this journal article and say ‘we don’t know where to start. It looks like we can start here,’ ” said Dr. Barrett, who is also an associate professor in the division of hospital medicine, department of internal medicine, at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

She noted that some of the good ideas floated around did not make the list, because they required daunting budget commitments and too much time to put into place.

Numerous other proposed solutions were of the wrong tone, according to Dr. Barrett.

“It’s not just about a hug or a piece of pizza,” she said.

Dr. Gold, who is an assistant professor at Washington University, St. Louis, and specializes in the mental health of health care workers, noted that, even though the list was pared to 10 action items, it is still hard for health care organizations to prioritize mental health.

“Many hospitals are still struggling with the active bleed of the pandemic and financially recovering,” she said. “If you’re dealing with a full ER and people are still dying of COVID and you don’t have the resources to support them, it’s really hard to then find magic money to deal with mental health. I’d love for that to be true.”

Every organization, however, can start with removing questions about mental and physical health diagnoses from credentialing and employment applications, which is one of the items on the list, she said.

“It’s the lowest-bar thing that you can fix for making people in crisis not fear getting help,” she said. That change must come on a state-by-state and individual hospital level.

Favorable reactions to list

Dr. Barrett, who also serves on the editorial advisory board of Internal Medicine News, said the reactions to the checklist have been “overwhelmingly favorable and appreciative.”

Eric J. Topol, MD, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and editor-in-chief of Medscape Medical News, tweeted about this list: “For COVID-19, more than ever before, it’s vital to keep clinicians in the U.S. health care workforce. These are 10 steps that will help.” The tweet was retweeted more than 100 times.

Lotte Dyrbye, MD, MHPE, a primary care physician and codirector of the program on physician well-being at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said in an interview that managing the anger around patients who choose to be unvaccinated is critical and something that has gotten little notice since the vaccines became available.

“Physicians and nurses are working extremely hard and seeing a lot of suffering and are taking care of patients very sick with COVID-19, knowing they had access to the vaccine. That is causing anger and frustration. We haven’t prepared health care workers to deal with that,” she said.
 

Outside expert: Not all items may be easy to implement

Dr. Dyrbye said that, though she found adding time to address COVID misinformation questions in appointments is very important, it may be wishful thinking.

The authors suggested training other members of the care team to answer those questions to free up time, but she said, for patients who have been swayed by misinformation, hearing information from someone other than the physician they have a relationship with won’t be convincing.

According to Dr. Dyrbye, the items on the list are not easy to implement, but the action plan is worthwhile to consider adopting as a multipronged approach.

“Most of these things are hard and we need to be in it for the long run,” she said.

The need is clear for efforts to address the mental health of not just experienced clinicians but those in training as well, she noted.
 

Related research

A study that was also recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggested that making a few simple changes can help improve the mental health of residents. The research, which included nearly 17,000 first-year residents who started training between 2007 and 2019, addressed indicators of mental health in light of interventions such as limiting residents’ work hours and providing more services.

The investigators found that, though depression remains high among residents, depressive symptoms among first-year residents dropped 24.4% from 2007 to 2019 in parallel with four main factors: an increase in mental health services; restrictions on work hours for residents; more sleep hours; and higher-quality feedback from faculty.

Dr. Barrett said she hopes her colleagues and health care workers everywhere will find some solace in seeing that the new checklist she coauthored was published in a prominent journal.

The message Dr. Barrett said she hopes they see is: “Someone is validating it is not in their head. They are validating we can do better. They are validating that we must.”

Dr. Barrett and coauthors had no conflicts of interest. Dr. Gold and Dr. Dyrbye also disclosed having no relevant financial relationships.

COVID-19’s relentless toll on the clinical workforce inspired four doctors to draft an action plan to stem the exits and help colleagues preserve their physical and mental health.

Indeed, a recent poll of 1,000 health care workers conducted Sept. 2-8 by Morning Consult, showed that 18% of medical workers polled quit their jobs during the pandemic. Additionally, 31% said they had at least thought about leaving their work.

“As physicians, educators, peers and friends of COVID-19 responders, we are gravely concerned about our colleagues’ exhaustion, burnout, and disillusionment,” wrote lead author Eileen Barrett, MD, and coauthors of the new action plan, which was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The 10-point, one-page checklist includes providing “practical support in the areas that clinicians identify as causing emotional stress or moral injury,” such as managing anger and grief when patients have chosen not to be vaccinated or confronting misinformation.

“Those are the things that are making people’s mental health worse” psychiatrist Jessi Gold, MD, MS, said in an interview. “I don’t think I’ve seen that mentioned other places.”

Among the other action items are:

• Reduce administrative tasks that are not “mission critical,” such as mandatory training that has no evidence of improving patient outcomes and meetings that could be skipped.
• Offer free and confidential resources to support clinicians’ mental health, such as easy access to crisis hotlines and peer support groups.
• Maintain transparency about personal protective equipment and contingency plans when there are shortages to restore trust.
• Encourage clinicians to use vacation time; leaders should model this.
• Implement suicide prevention strategies, including wellness check-ins for clinicians in hard-hit areas.

The action plan was based on the authors’ own experiences and the stories of colleagues and information in literature. It includes 10 changes health care leaders could make to help retain providers who may be on the brink of leaving their jobs or leaving medicine

Action items intended to be easily achievable, low cost

Dr. Barrett, who is a hospitalist in Albuquerque, said the goal was to present easily achievable and low-cost action items that clinicians and health care leaders could use as a starting point when change seems insurmountable and evidence on what works is slow to come.

She said one of the things that spurred her to coauthor the list was becoming aware of other clinicians’ “secret shame” in thinking about leaving medicine.

“Maybe a person who is not being listened to could take this journal article and say ‘we don’t know where to start. It looks like we can start here,’ ” said Dr. Barrett, who is also an associate professor in the division of hospital medicine, department of internal medicine, at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.

She noted that some of the good ideas floated around did not make the list, because they required daunting budget commitments and too much time to put into place.

Numerous other proposed solutions were of the wrong tone, according to Dr. Barrett.

“It’s not just about a hug or a piece of pizza,” she said.

Dr. Gold, who is an assistant professor at Washington University, St. Louis, and specializes in the mental health of health care workers, noted that, even though the list was pared to 10 action items, it is still hard for health care organizations to prioritize mental health.

“Many hospitals are still struggling with the active bleed of the pandemic and financially recovering,” she said. “If you’re dealing with a full ER and people are still dying of COVID and you don’t have the resources to support them, it’s really hard to then find magic money to deal with mental health. I’d love for that to be true.”

Every organization, however, can start with removing questions about mental and physical health diagnoses from credentialing and employment applications, which is one of the items on the list, she said.

“It’s the lowest-bar thing that you can fix for making people in crisis not fear getting help,” she said. That change must come on a state-by-state and individual hospital level.

Favorable reactions to list

Dr. Barrett, who also serves on the editorial advisory board of Internal Medicine News, said the reactions to the checklist have been “overwhelmingly favorable and appreciative.”

Eric J. Topol, MD, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and editor-in-chief of Medscape Medical News, tweeted about this list: “For COVID-19, more than ever before, it’s vital to keep clinicians in the U.S. health care workforce. These are 10 steps that will help.” The tweet was retweeted more than 100 times.

Lotte Dyrbye, MD, MHPE, a primary care physician and codirector of the program on physician well-being at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said in an interview that managing the anger around patients who choose to be unvaccinated is critical and something that has gotten little notice since the vaccines became available.

“Physicians and nurses are working extremely hard and seeing a lot of suffering and are taking care of patients very sick with COVID-19, knowing they had access to the vaccine. That is causing anger and frustration. We haven’t prepared health care workers to deal with that,” she said.
 

Outside expert: Not all items may be easy to implement

Dr. Dyrbye said that, though she found adding time to address COVID misinformation questions in appointments is very important, it may be wishful thinking.

The authors suggested training other members of the care team to answer those questions to free up time, but she said, for patients who have been swayed by misinformation, hearing information from someone other than the physician they have a relationship with won’t be convincing.

According to Dr. Dyrbye, the items on the list are not easy to implement, but the action plan is worthwhile to consider adopting as a multipronged approach.

“Most of these things are hard and we need to be in it for the long run,” she said.

The need is clear for efforts to address the mental health of not just experienced clinicians but those in training as well, she noted.
 

Related research

A study that was also recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggested that making a few simple changes can help improve the mental health of residents. The research, which included nearly 17,000 first-year residents who started training between 2007 and 2019, addressed indicators of mental health in light of interventions such as limiting residents’ work hours and providing more services.

The investigators found that, though depression remains high among residents, depressive symptoms among first-year residents dropped 24.4% from 2007 to 2019 in parallel with four main factors: an increase in mental health services; restrictions on work hours for residents; more sleep hours; and higher-quality feedback from faculty.

Dr. Barrett said she hopes her colleagues and health care workers everywhere will find some solace in seeing that the new checklist she coauthored was published in a prominent journal.

The message Dr. Barrett said she hopes they see is: “Someone is validating it is not in their head. They are validating we can do better. They are validating that we must.”

Dr. Barrett and coauthors had no conflicts of interest. Dr. Gold and Dr. Dyrbye also disclosed having no relevant financial relationships.

Ramy Sedhom, MD, a medical oncologist and a palliative care physician at Penn Medicine Princeton Health in Plainsboro, N.J., will always wonder if prior authorization refusals led to his patient’s death.

The patient had advanced gastric cancer and the insurer initially denied a PET scan to rule out metastatic disease. When the scan was eventually allowed, it revealed that the cancer had spread.

Standard treatment would have been difficult for the patient, an older individual with comorbidities. But Dr. Sedhom knew that a European study had reported equal efficacy and fewer side effects with a reduced chemotherapy regimen, and he thought that was the best approach in this situation.

The insurer disagreed with Dr. Sedhom’s decision and, while the two argued, the patient’s symptoms worsened. He was admitted to the hospital, where he experienced a decline in function, common for older patients. “Long story short, he was never able to seek treatment and then transitioned to hospice,” Dr. Sedhom said. “It was one of those situations where there was a 3- to 4-week delay in what should have been standard care.”

That course of events is not an outlier but everyday life for physicians trying to navigate insurers’ prior authorization rules before they can treat their patients. Nearly 4 years after major organizations — American Hospital Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, American Medical Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, and others — signed a consensus statement agreeing to improve the prior authorization process, physicians say little progress has been made.

Indeed, 83% of physicians say that the number of prior authorizations required for prescription medications and medical services has increased over the last 5 years, according to survey results released earlier this year.

“It’s decidedly worse — there’s no question about it,” said Andrew R. Spector, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine specialist at Duke Health in Durham, N.C. “Drugs that I used to get without prior authorizations now require them.”

When Vignesh I. Doraiswamy, MD, an internal medicine hospitalist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, discharged a patient with Clostridioides difficile infection, he followed clinical guidelines to prescribe vancomycin for 10 to 14 days. “And the insurance company said, ‘Well, yeah, we only authorize about 5 days,’ which just makes no sense,” Dr. Doraiswamy said. “There’s nowhere in any literature that says 5 days is sufficient. What worries me is that is the standard of care we are supposed to give and yet we are unable to.”

Yash B. Jobanputra, MD, a cardiology fellow at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass., laments that prior authorization is used in situations that simply do not make common sense. During his residency, a woman who had tested positive for the BRCA gene mutation with a strong family history of breast cancer needed a breast ultrasound and an MRI scan every 6 months to 1 year. Despite the documentation that she was at extremely high risk for developing breast cancer, he had to go through prior authorization every time she was due for new images.

“I had to call the insurance company, they would put me on hold, I would wait to speak to a physician — and the end response would be, ‘Yeah, this is what needs to be done,’” he said. “But having established her positive status once should be enough really. I shouldn’t have to go through the circus all over again.”

Prior authorization is also being used for routine diagnostics, such as a Holter monitor for patients complaining of heart palpitations. “Depending on the insurance, for some patients we can give it to them in the clinic right away,” Dr. Jobanputra said. “Whereas some others we have to wait until we get prior authorization from the insurance company and the patient has to come back again to the hospital to get the monitor. That is a delay in patient care.”

The delays also extend to emergency care, Dr. Doraiswamy said. He cites the example of a heart attack patient who needed an emergency heart catheterization but ran into a prior authorization delay. “I just said, ‘Try your best not to get stressed’ which is not easy for a patient finding out their stay wasn’t covered when they had just been through a heart attack,” he said. “Then I spent 20 to 30 minutes — most of it on hold — to answer the question ‘Why did this patient need to get admitted?’ “

Physicians feel disrespected because that type of prior authorization hassle is just busywork. “Rarely is a valid stay that was initially denied, not eventually accepted,” Dr. Doraiswamy said. “But why couldn’t they have just seen that the guy had a heart attack and he obviously needed to be in the hospital?”

For Dr. Spector, the Duke Health sleep medicine specialist, prior authorization is not just a speed bump, it’s a full stop. Insurers have started mandating a multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) to confirm narcolepsy before covering medication to treat the condition. “We know that the MSLT is very often wrong,” he said. “There are a lot of times we’re dealing with patients with narcolepsy who simply don’t meet the testing criteria that the insurance requires, and payers will not accept our clinical judgment.”

In his view, the prior authorization landscape is worsening — and not only because a “faulty test” is being used to deny treatment. “The appeal process is worse,” Dr. Spector said. “I used to be able to get on the phone and do a peer-to-peer review with a physician who I could reason with… but that doesn’t happen anymore. There is virtually no way to bypass these blanket rules.”

Other survey findings also stand in direct contradiction of the 2018 consensus agreement:

A large majority (87%) of physicians report that prior authorization interferes with continuity of care, even though the industry groups agreed that patients should be protected from treatment disruption when there is a formulary or treatment-coverage change.

Despite a consensus to encourage transparency and easy accessibility of prior authorization requirements, 68% of physicians reported that it is difficult to determine whether a prescription medication requires prior authorization, and 58% report that it’s difficult for medical services.

Phone and fax are the most commonly used methods for completing prior authorizations, despite agreement that electronic prior authorization, using existing national standard transactions, should be accelerated. Fewer than one quarter of physicians said that their electronic health record system supports electronic prior authorization for prescription medications.

Dr. Spector wants to see legislation that forces insurers to live up to some of the tenets of the 2018 consensus statement. In September, a new Texas law went into effect, exempting physicians from prior authorization if, during the previous six months, 90% of their treatments met an insurer›s medical necessity criteria. In January, the recently approved Prior Authorization Reform Act in Illinois will reduce the number of services subject to prior authorization, mandate a prior authorization decision within 5 days, and set disciplinary measures for health plans that do not comply, among other things.

“What gives me hope is that at least somewhere in the country, somebody is doing something,” Dr. Spector said. “And if it goes well, maybe other insurers will adopt it. I’m really hoping they demonstrate that the money they can save on the administration of all the appeals and prior authorization paperwork can actually go into caring for patients.”

In addition to state-level action, reform may also be advancing at the federal level. In October, a bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate that mirrors a prior authorization reform bill introduced in the House of Representatives last May. Both bills have broad bipartisan support; the House bill has more than 235 co-sponsors.

In an interview with this news organization, Rep. Ami Bera, MD, (D-CA) said it is “very realistic” that the bill will become law during this session of Congress. “We do think this bill will get marked up in committee and hopefully we can get it to the floor either as a stand-alone bill where we know we have the votes to pass it or as part of a larger legislative package,” he said.

If approved, the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act of 2021 would require that Medicare Advantage plans minimize the use of prior authorization for routinely approved services; require real-time decisions for certain requests; report the extent of their use of prior authorization and their rate of approvals or denials, among other things; and establish an electronic prior authorization system.

Medicare Advantage plans are private insurers that are regulated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which will create the specific rules and penalties associated with the reforms, if they become law. “One would presume that a condition of being a Medicare Advantage plan is that you’re going to have to comply with these new regulations,” said Katie Orrico, senior vice president of health policy and advocacy for the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurological Surgeons (AANS/CNS). “So they will have some amount of teeth in the form of a mandate.”

The AANS and CNS are part of the Regulatory Relief Coalition, a group of 14 national physician specialty organizations. Winning prior authorization reform in the Medicare Advantage plans is part of its bigger strategy. “If those commercial plans have to follow a set of rules and processes for Medicare, then why not just expand those same processes to all other parts of their business?” Ms. Orrico said. 

Despite his frustration with their prior authorization processes, Dr. Doraiswamy, the Ohio State hospitalist, agrees that working to improve insurers’ practices is the best way forward. “It’s so easy to make them look like these evil, giant conglomerations that exist solely to suck money and not care about anyone’s health, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case,” he said. “We really have to figure out how best to work with insurance companies to make sure that, while they are profit-generating institutions, that [profit] shouldn’t come at the cost of patient care.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Ramy Sedhom, MD, a medical oncologist and a palliative care physician at Penn Medicine Princeton Health in Plainsboro, N.J., will always wonder if prior authorization refusals led to his patient’s death.

The patient had advanced gastric cancer and the insurer initially denied a PET scan to rule out metastatic disease. When the scan was eventually allowed, it revealed that the cancer had spread.

Standard treatment would have been difficult for the patient, an older individual with comorbidities. But Dr. Sedhom knew that a European study had reported equal efficacy and fewer side effects with a reduced chemotherapy regimen, and he thought that was the best approach in this situation.

The insurer disagreed with Dr. Sedhom’s decision and, while the two argued, the patient’s symptoms worsened. He was admitted to the hospital, where he experienced a decline in function, common for older patients. “Long story short, he was never able to seek treatment and then transitioned to hospice,” Dr. Sedhom said. “It was one of those situations where there was a 3- to 4-week delay in what should have been standard care.”

That course of events is not an outlier but everyday life for physicians trying to navigate insurers’ prior authorization rules before they can treat their patients. Nearly 4 years after major organizations — American Hospital Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, American Medical Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, and others — signed a consensus statement agreeing to improve the prior authorization process, physicians say little progress has been made.

Indeed, 83% of physicians say that the number of prior authorizations required for prescription medications and medical services has increased over the last 5 years, according to survey results released earlier this year.

“It’s decidedly worse — there’s no question about it,” said Andrew R. Spector, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine specialist at Duke Health in Durham, N.C. “Drugs that I used to get without prior authorizations now require them.”

When Vignesh I. Doraiswamy, MD, an internal medicine hospitalist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, discharged a patient with Clostridioides difficile infection, he followed clinical guidelines to prescribe vancomycin for 10 to 14 days. “And the insurance company said, ‘Well, yeah, we only authorize about 5 days,’ which just makes no sense,” Dr. Doraiswamy said. “There’s nowhere in any literature that says 5 days is sufficient. What worries me is that is the standard of care we are supposed to give and yet we are unable to.”

Yash B. Jobanputra, MD, a cardiology fellow at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass., laments that prior authorization is used in situations that simply do not make common sense. During his residency, a woman who had tested positive for the BRCA gene mutation with a strong family history of breast cancer needed a breast ultrasound and an MRI scan every 6 months to 1 year. Despite the documentation that she was at extremely high risk for developing breast cancer, he had to go through prior authorization every time she was due for new images.

“I had to call the insurance company, they would put me on hold, I would wait to speak to a physician — and the end response would be, ‘Yeah, this is what needs to be done,’” he said. “But having established her positive status once should be enough really. I shouldn’t have to go through the circus all over again.”

Prior authorization is also being used for routine diagnostics, such as a Holter monitor for patients complaining of heart palpitations. “Depending on the insurance, for some patients we can give it to them in the clinic right away,” Dr. Jobanputra said. “Whereas some others we have to wait until we get prior authorization from the insurance company and the patient has to come back again to the hospital to get the monitor. That is a delay in patient care.”

The delays also extend to emergency care, Dr. Doraiswamy said. He cites the example of a heart attack patient who needed an emergency heart catheterization but ran into a prior authorization delay. “I just said, ‘Try your best not to get stressed’ which is not easy for a patient finding out their stay wasn’t covered when they had just been through a heart attack,” he said. “Then I spent 20 to 30 minutes — most of it on hold — to answer the question ‘Why did this patient need to get admitted?’ “

Physicians feel disrespected because that type of prior authorization hassle is just busywork. “Rarely is a valid stay that was initially denied, not eventually accepted,” Dr. Doraiswamy said. “But why couldn’t they have just seen that the guy had a heart attack and he obviously needed to be in the hospital?”

For Dr. Spector, the Duke Health sleep medicine specialist, prior authorization is not just a speed bump, it’s a full stop. Insurers have started mandating a multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) to confirm narcolepsy before covering medication to treat the condition. “We know that the MSLT is very often wrong,” he said. “There are a lot of times we’re dealing with patients with narcolepsy who simply don’t meet the testing criteria that the insurance requires, and payers will not accept our clinical judgment.”

In his view, the prior authorization landscape is worsening — and not only because a “faulty test” is being used to deny treatment. “The appeal process is worse,” Dr. Spector said. “I used to be able to get on the phone and do a peer-to-peer review with a physician who I could reason with… but that doesn’t happen anymore. There is virtually no way to bypass these blanket rules.”

Other survey findings also stand in direct contradiction of the 2018 consensus agreement:

A large majority (87%) of physicians report that prior authorization interferes with continuity of care, even though the industry groups agreed that patients should be protected from treatment disruption when there is a formulary or treatment-coverage change.

Despite a consensus to encourage transparency and easy accessibility of prior authorization requirements, 68% of physicians reported that it is difficult to determine whether a prescription medication requires prior authorization, and 58% report that it’s difficult for medical services.

Phone and fax are the most commonly used methods for completing prior authorizations, despite agreement that electronic prior authorization, using existing national standard transactions, should be accelerated. Fewer than one quarter of physicians said that their electronic health record system supports electronic prior authorization for prescription medications.

Dr. Spector wants to see legislation that forces insurers to live up to some of the tenets of the 2018 consensus statement. In September, a new Texas law went into effect, exempting physicians from prior authorization if, during the previous six months, 90% of their treatments met an insurer›s medical necessity criteria. In January, the recently approved Prior Authorization Reform Act in Illinois will reduce the number of services subject to prior authorization, mandate a prior authorization decision within 5 days, and set disciplinary measures for health plans that do not comply, among other things.

“What gives me hope is that at least somewhere in the country, somebody is doing something,” Dr. Spector said. “And if it goes well, maybe other insurers will adopt it. I’m really hoping they demonstrate that the money they can save on the administration of all the appeals and prior authorization paperwork can actually go into caring for patients.”

In addition to state-level action, reform may also be advancing at the federal level. In October, a bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate that mirrors a prior authorization reform bill introduced in the House of Representatives last May. Both bills have broad bipartisan support; the House bill has more than 235 co-sponsors.

In an interview with this news organization, Rep. Ami Bera, MD, (D-CA) said it is “very realistic” that the bill will become law during this session of Congress. “We do think this bill will get marked up in committee and hopefully we can get it to the floor either as a stand-alone bill where we know we have the votes to pass it or as part of a larger legislative package,” he said.

If approved, the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act of 2021 would require that Medicare Advantage plans minimize the use of prior authorization for routinely approved services; require real-time decisions for certain requests; report the extent of their use of prior authorization and their rate of approvals or denials, among other things; and establish an electronic prior authorization system.

Medicare Advantage plans are private insurers that are regulated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which will create the specific rules and penalties associated with the reforms, if they become law. “One would presume that a condition of being a Medicare Advantage plan is that you’re going to have to comply with these new regulations,” said Katie Orrico, senior vice president of health policy and advocacy for the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurological Surgeons (AANS/CNS). “So they will have some amount of teeth in the form of a mandate.”

The AANS and CNS are part of the Regulatory Relief Coalition, a group of 14 national physician specialty organizations. Winning prior authorization reform in the Medicare Advantage plans is part of its bigger strategy. “If those commercial plans have to follow a set of rules and processes for Medicare, then why not just expand those same processes to all other parts of their business?” Ms. Orrico said. 

Despite his frustration with their prior authorization processes, Dr. Doraiswamy, the Ohio State hospitalist, agrees that working to improve insurers’ practices is the best way forward. “It’s so easy to make them look like these evil, giant conglomerations that exist solely to suck money and not care about anyone’s health, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case,” he said. “We really have to figure out how best to work with insurance companies to make sure that, while they are profit-generating institutions, that [profit] shouldn’t come at the cost of patient care.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Ramy Sedhom, MD, a medical oncologist and a palliative care physician at Penn Medicine Princeton Health in Plainsboro, N.J., will always wonder if prior authorization refusals led to his patient’s death.

The patient had advanced gastric cancer and the insurer initially denied a PET scan to rule out metastatic disease. When the scan was eventually allowed, it revealed that the cancer had spread.

Standard treatment would have been difficult for the patient, an older individual with comorbidities. But Dr. Sedhom knew that a European study had reported equal efficacy and fewer side effects with a reduced chemotherapy regimen, and he thought that was the best approach in this situation.

The insurer disagreed with Dr. Sedhom’s decision and, while the two argued, the patient’s symptoms worsened. He was admitted to the hospital, where he experienced a decline in function, common for older patients. “Long story short, he was never able to seek treatment and then transitioned to hospice,” Dr. Sedhom said. “It was one of those situations where there was a 3- to 4-week delay in what should have been standard care.”

That course of events is not an outlier but everyday life for physicians trying to navigate insurers’ prior authorization rules before they can treat their patients. Nearly 4 years after major organizations — American Hospital Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans, American Medical Association, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, and others — signed a consensus statement agreeing to improve the prior authorization process, physicians say little progress has been made.

Indeed, 83% of physicians say that the number of prior authorizations required for prescription medications and medical services has increased over the last 5 years, according to survey results released earlier this year.

“It’s decidedly worse — there’s no question about it,” said Andrew R. Spector, MD, a neurologist and sleep medicine specialist at Duke Health in Durham, N.C. “Drugs that I used to get without prior authorizations now require them.”

When Vignesh I. Doraiswamy, MD, an internal medicine hospitalist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, discharged a patient with Clostridioides difficile infection, he followed clinical guidelines to prescribe vancomycin for 10 to 14 days. “And the insurance company said, ‘Well, yeah, we only authorize about 5 days,’ which just makes no sense,” Dr. Doraiswamy said. “There’s nowhere in any literature that says 5 days is sufficient. What worries me is that is the standard of care we are supposed to give and yet we are unable to.”

Yash B. Jobanputra, MD, a cardiology fellow at Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester, Mass., laments that prior authorization is used in situations that simply do not make common sense. During his residency, a woman who had tested positive for the BRCA gene mutation with a strong family history of breast cancer needed a breast ultrasound and an MRI scan every 6 months to 1 year. Despite the documentation that she was at extremely high risk for developing breast cancer, he had to go through prior authorization every time she was due for new images.

“I had to call the insurance company, they would put me on hold, I would wait to speak to a physician — and the end response would be, ‘Yeah, this is what needs to be done,’” he said. “But having established her positive status once should be enough really. I shouldn’t have to go through the circus all over again.”

Prior authorization is also being used for routine diagnostics, such as a Holter monitor for patients complaining of heart palpitations. “Depending on the insurance, for some patients we can give it to them in the clinic right away,” Dr. Jobanputra said. “Whereas some others we have to wait until we get prior authorization from the insurance company and the patient has to come back again to the hospital to get the monitor. That is a delay in patient care.”

The delays also extend to emergency care, Dr. Doraiswamy said. He cites the example of a heart attack patient who needed an emergency heart catheterization but ran into a prior authorization delay. “I just said, ‘Try your best not to get stressed’ which is not easy for a patient finding out their stay wasn’t covered when they had just been through a heart attack,” he said. “Then I spent 20 to 30 minutes — most of it on hold — to answer the question ‘Why did this patient need to get admitted?’ “

Physicians feel disrespected because that type of prior authorization hassle is just busywork. “Rarely is a valid stay that was initially denied, not eventually accepted,” Dr. Doraiswamy said. “But why couldn’t they have just seen that the guy had a heart attack and he obviously needed to be in the hospital?”

For Dr. Spector, the Duke Health sleep medicine specialist, prior authorization is not just a speed bump, it’s a full stop. Insurers have started mandating a multiple sleep latency test (MSLT) to confirm narcolepsy before covering medication to treat the condition. “We know that the MSLT is very often wrong,” he said. “There are a lot of times we’re dealing with patients with narcolepsy who simply don’t meet the testing criteria that the insurance requires, and payers will not accept our clinical judgment.”

In his view, the prior authorization landscape is worsening — and not only because a “faulty test” is being used to deny treatment. “The appeal process is worse,” Dr. Spector said. “I used to be able to get on the phone and do a peer-to-peer review with a physician who I could reason with… but that doesn’t happen anymore. There is virtually no way to bypass these blanket rules.”

Other survey findings also stand in direct contradiction of the 2018 consensus agreement:

A large majority (87%) of physicians report that prior authorization interferes with continuity of care, even though the industry groups agreed that patients should be protected from treatment disruption when there is a formulary or treatment-coverage change.

Despite a consensus to encourage transparency and easy accessibility of prior authorization requirements, 68% of physicians reported that it is difficult to determine whether a prescription medication requires prior authorization, and 58% report that it’s difficult for medical services.

Phone and fax are the most commonly used methods for completing prior authorizations, despite agreement that electronic prior authorization, using existing national standard transactions, should be accelerated. Fewer than one quarter of physicians said that their electronic health record system supports electronic prior authorization for prescription medications.

Dr. Spector wants to see legislation that forces insurers to live up to some of the tenets of the 2018 consensus statement. In September, a new Texas law went into effect, exempting physicians from prior authorization if, during the previous six months, 90% of their treatments met an insurer›s medical necessity criteria. In January, the recently approved Prior Authorization Reform Act in Illinois will reduce the number of services subject to prior authorization, mandate a prior authorization decision within 5 days, and set disciplinary measures for health plans that do not comply, among other things.

“What gives me hope is that at least somewhere in the country, somebody is doing something,” Dr. Spector said. “And if it goes well, maybe other insurers will adopt it. I’m really hoping they demonstrate that the money they can save on the administration of all the appeals and prior authorization paperwork can actually go into caring for patients.”

In addition to state-level action, reform may also be advancing at the federal level. In October, a bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate that mirrors a prior authorization reform bill introduced in the House of Representatives last May. Both bills have broad bipartisan support; the House bill has more than 235 co-sponsors.

In an interview with this news organization, Rep. Ami Bera, MD, (D-CA) said it is “very realistic” that the bill will become law during this session of Congress. “We do think this bill will get marked up in committee and hopefully we can get it to the floor either as a stand-alone bill where we know we have the votes to pass it or as part of a larger legislative package,” he said.

If approved, the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act of 2021 would require that Medicare Advantage plans minimize the use of prior authorization for routinely approved services; require real-time decisions for certain requests; report the extent of their use of prior authorization and their rate of approvals or denials, among other things; and establish an electronic prior authorization system.

Medicare Advantage plans are private insurers that are regulated by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which will create the specific rules and penalties associated with the reforms, if they become law. “One would presume that a condition of being a Medicare Advantage plan is that you’re going to have to comply with these new regulations,” said Katie Orrico, senior vice president of health policy and advocacy for the American Association of Neurological Surgeons and Congress of Neurological Surgeons (AANS/CNS). “So they will have some amount of teeth in the form of a mandate.”

The AANS and CNS are part of the Regulatory Relief Coalition, a group of 14 national physician specialty organizations. Winning prior authorization reform in the Medicare Advantage plans is part of its bigger strategy. “If those commercial plans have to follow a set of rules and processes for Medicare, then why not just expand those same processes to all other parts of their business?” Ms. Orrico said. 

Despite his frustration with their prior authorization processes, Dr. Doraiswamy, the Ohio State hospitalist, agrees that working to improve insurers’ practices is the best way forward. “It’s so easy to make them look like these evil, giant conglomerations that exist solely to suck money and not care about anyone’s health, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily the case,” he said. “We really have to figure out how best to work with insurance companies to make sure that, while they are profit-generating institutions, that [profit] shouldn’t come at the cost of patient care.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’s terrifying first wave in the spring of 2020, dozens of hospitals in high-incidence areas either planned or opened temporary, emergency field hospitals to cover anticipated demand for beds beyond the capacity of local permanent hospitals.

Chastened by images of overwhelmed health care systems in Northern Italy and other hard-hit areas,¹ the planners used available modeling tools and estimates for projecting maximum potential need in worst-case scenarios. Some of these temporary hospitals never opened. Others opened in convention centers, parking garages, or parking lot tents, and ended up being used to a lesser degree than the worst-case scenarios.

But those who participated in the planning – including, in many cases, hospitalists – believe they created alternate care site manuals that could be quickly revived in the event of future COVID surges or other, similar crises. Better to plan for too much, they say, than not plan for enough.

Field hospitals or alternate care sites are defined in a recent journal article in Prehospital Disaster Medicine as “locations that can be converted to provide either inpatient and/or outpatient health services when existing facilities are compromised by a hazard impact or the volume of patients exceeds available capacity and/or capabilities.”²

University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation

The lead author of that report, Sue Anne Bell, PhD, FNP-BC, a disaster expert and assistant professor of nursing at the University of Michigan (UM), was one of five members of the leadership team for planning UM’s field hospital. They used an organizational unit structure based on the U.S. military’s staffing structure, with their work organized around six units of planning: personnel and labor, security, clinical operations, logistics and supply, planning and training, and communications. This team planned a 519-bed step-down care facility, the Michigan Medicine Field Hospital, for a 73,000-foot indoor track and performance facility at the university, three miles from UM’s main hospital. The aim was to provide safe care in a resource-limited environment.

“We were prepared, but the need never materialized as the peak of COVID cases started to subside,” Dr. Bell said. The team was ready to open within days using a “T-Minus” framework of days remaining on an official countdown clock. But when the need and deadlines kept getting pushed back, that gave them more time to develop clearer procedures.

Two Michigan Medicine hospitalists, Christopher Smith, MD, and David Paje, MD, MPH, both professors at UM’s medical school, were intimately involved in the process. “I was the medical director for the respiratory care unit that was opened for COVID patients, so I was pulled in to assist in the field hospital planning,” said Dr. Smith.

Baltimore builds a convention center hospital

A COVID-19 field hospital was planned and executed at an exhibit hall in the Baltimore Convention Center, starting in March 2020 under the leadership of Johns Hopkins Bayview hospitalist Eric Howell, MD, MHM, who eventually handed over responsibilities as chief medical officer when he assumed the position of CEO for the Society of Hospital Medicine in July of that year.

Courtesy Dr. Eric Howell

Hopkins collaborated with the University of Maryland health system and state leaders, including the Secretary of Health, to open a 252-bed temporary facility, which at its peak carried a census of 48 patients, with no on-site mortality or cardiac arrests, before it was closed in June 2021 – ready to reopen if necessary. It also served as Baltimore’s major site for polymerase chain reaction COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, and monoclonal antibody infusions, along with medical research.

“My belief at the time we started was that my entire 20-year career as a hospitalist had prepared me for the challenge of opening a COVID field hospital,” Dr. Howell said. “I had learned how to build clinical programs. The difference was that instead of months and years to build a program, we only had a few weeks.”

His first request was to bring on an associate medical director for the field hospital, Melinda E. Kantsiper, MD, a hospitalist and director of clinical operations in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview. She became the field hospital’s CMO when Dr. Howell moved to SHM. “As hospitalists, we are trained to care for the patient in front of us while at the same time creating systems that can adjust to rapidly changing circumstances,” Dr. Kantsiper said. “We did what was asked and set up a field hospital that cared for a total of 1,500 COVID patients.”

Courtesy Johns Hopkins Medicine

“They gave us a lot of autonomy and helped us break down barriers. They gave us the political capital to say proper PPE was absolutely essential. As hard and devastating as the pandemic has been, one take-away is that we showed that we can be more flexible and elastic in response to actual needs than we used to think.”

Range of challenges

Among the questions that need to be answered by a field hospital’s planners, the first is ‘where to put it?’ The answer is, hopefully, someplace not too far away, large enough, with ready access to supplies and intake. The next question is ‘who is the patient?’ Clinicians must determine who goes to the field hospital versus who stays at the standing hospital. How sick should these patients be? And when do they need to go back to the permanent hospital? Can staff be trained to recognize when patients in the field hospital are starting to decompensate? The EPIC Deterioration Index³ is a proprietary prediction model that was used by more than a hundred hospitals during the pandemic.

The hospitalist team may develop specific inclusion and exclusion criteria – for example, don’t admit patients who are receiving oxygen therapy above a certain threshold or who are hemodynamically unstable. These criteria should reflect the capacity of the field hospital and the needs of the permanent hospital. At Michigan, as at other field hospital sites, the goal was to offer a step-down or postacute setting for patients with COVID-19 who were too sick to return home but didn’t need acute or ICU-level care, thereby freeing up beds at the permanent hospital for patients who were sicker.

Other questions: What is the process for admissions and discharges? How will patients be transported? What kind of staffing is needed, and what levels of care will be provided? What about rehabilitation services, or palliative care? What about patients with substance abuse or psychiatric comorbidities?

“Are we going to do paper charting? How will that work out for long-term documentation and billing?” Dr. Bell said. A clear reporting structure and communication pathways are essential. Among the other operational processes to address, outlined in Dr. Bell’s article, are orientation and training, PPE donning and doffing procedures, the code or rapid response team, patient and staff food and nutrition, infection control protocols, pharmacy services, access to radiology, rounding procedures, staff support, and the morgue.

One other issue that shouldn’t be overlooked is health equity in the field hospital. “Providing safe and equitable care should be the focus. Thinking who goes to the field hospital should be done within a health equity framework,” Dr. Bell said.⁴ She also wonders if field hospital planners are sharing their experience with colleagues across the country and developing more collaborative relationships with other hospitals in their communities.

“Field hospitals can be different things,” Dr. Bell said. “The important take-home is it doesn’t have to be in a tent or a parking garage, which can be suboptimal.” In many cases, it may be better to focus on finding unused space within the hospital – whether a lobby, staff lounge, or unoccupied unit – closer to personnel, supplies, pharmacy, and the like. “I think the pandemic showed us how unprepared we were as a health care system, and how much more we need to do in preparation for future crises.”

Limits to the temporary hospital

In New York City, which had the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak during the first surge in the spring of 2020, a 1,000-bed field hospital was opened at the Jacob Javits Center in March 2020 and closed that June. “I was in the field hospital early, in March and April, when our hospitals were temporarily overrun,” said hospitalist Mona Krouss, MD, FACP, CPPS, NYC Health + Hospitals’ director of patient safety. “My role was to figure out how to get patients on our medical floors into these field hospitals, with responsibility for helping to revise admission criteria,” she said.

“No one knew how horrible it would become. This was so unanticipated, so difficult to operationalize. What they were able to create was amazing, but there were just too many barriers to have it work smoothly,” Dr. Krouss said.

Courtesy of Renown Regional Medical Center

Replicating hospital work flows

“We ensured that everybody who needed to be within the walls of the permanent hospitals was able to stay there,” said Dr. Lee’s colleague, hospitalist Adnan (Eddy) Akbar, MD. “The postacute system we ordinarily rely on was no longer accepting patients. Other hospitals in the area were able to manage within their capacity because Renown’s field hospital could admit excess patients. We tried to replicate in the field hospital, as much as possible, the work flows and systems of our main hospital.”

When the field hospital finally opened, Dr. Akbar said, “we had a good feeling. We were ready. If something more catastrophic had come down, we were ready to care for more patients. In the field hospital you have to keep monitoring your work flow – almost on a daily basis. But we felt privileged to be working for a system where you knew you can go and care for everyone who needed care.”

One upside of the field hospital experience for participating clinicians, Dr. Lee added, is the opportunity to practice creatively. “The downside is it’s extremely expensive, and has consequences for the mental health of staff. Like so many of these things, it wore on people over time – such as all the time spent donning and doffing protective equipment. And recently the patients have become a lot less gracious.”

Amy Baughman, MD, a hospitalist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was co-medical director of the postacute care section of a 1,000-bed field hospital, Boston Hope Medical Center, opened in April 2020 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The other half of the facility was dedicated to undomiciled COVID-19 patients who had no place else to go. Peak census was around 100 patients, housed on four units, each with a clinical team led by a physician.

Partners HealthCare

References

1. Horowitz J. Italy’s health care system groans under coronavirus – a warning to the world. New York Times. 2020 Mar 12.

2. Bell SA et al. T-Minus 10 days: The role of an academic medical institution in field hospital planning. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2021 Feb 18:1-6. doi: 10.1017/S1049023X21000224.

3. Singh K et al. Evaluating a widely implemented proprietary deterioration index model among hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2021 Jul;18(7):1129-37. doi: 10.1513/AnnalsATS.202006-698OC.

4. Bell SA et al. Alternate care sites during COVID-19 pandemic: Policy implications for pandemic surge planning. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2021 Jul 23;1-3. doi: 10.1017/dmp.2021.241.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’s terrifying first wave in the spring of 2020, dozens of hospitals in high-incidence areas either planned or opened temporary, emergency field hospitals to cover anticipated demand for beds beyond the capacity of local permanent hospitals.

Chastened by images of overwhelmed health care systems in Northern Italy and other hard-hit areas,¹ the planners used available modeling tools and estimates for projecting maximum potential need in worst-case scenarios. Some of these temporary hospitals never opened. Others opened in convention centers, parking garages, or parking lot tents, and ended up being used to a lesser degree than the worst-case scenarios.

But those who participated in the planning – including, in many cases, hospitalists – believe they created alternate care site manuals that could be quickly revived in the event of future COVID surges or other, similar crises. Better to plan for too much, they say, than not plan for enough.

Field hospitals or alternate care sites are defined in a recent journal article in Prehospital Disaster Medicine as “locations that can be converted to provide either inpatient and/or outpatient health services when existing facilities are compromised by a hazard impact or the volume of patients exceeds available capacity and/or capabilities.”²

University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation

The lead author of that report, Sue Anne Bell, PhD, FNP-BC, a disaster expert and assistant professor of nursing at the University of Michigan (UM), was one of five members of the leadership team for planning UM’s field hospital. They used an organizational unit structure based on the U.S. military’s staffing structure, with their work organized around six units of planning: personnel and labor, security, clinical operations, logistics and supply, planning and training, and communications. This team planned a 519-bed step-down care facility, the Michigan Medicine Field Hospital, for a 73,000-foot indoor track and performance facility at the university, three miles from UM’s main hospital. The aim was to provide safe care in a resource-limited environment.

“We were prepared, but the need never materialized as the peak of COVID cases started to subside,” Dr. Bell said. The team was ready to open within days using a “T-Minus” framework of days remaining on an official countdown clock. But when the need and deadlines kept getting pushed back, that gave them more time to develop clearer procedures.

Two Michigan Medicine hospitalists, Christopher Smith, MD, and David Paje, MD, MPH, both professors at UM’s medical school, were intimately involved in the process. “I was the medical director for the respiratory care unit that was opened for COVID patients, so I was pulled in to assist in the field hospital planning,” said Dr. Smith.

Baltimore builds a convention center hospital

A COVID-19 field hospital was planned and executed at an exhibit hall in the Baltimore Convention Center, starting in March 2020 under the leadership of Johns Hopkins Bayview hospitalist Eric Howell, MD, MHM, who eventually handed over responsibilities as chief medical officer when he assumed the position of CEO for the Society of Hospital Medicine in July of that year.

Courtesy Dr. Eric Howell

Hopkins collaborated with the University of Maryland health system and state leaders, including the Secretary of Health, to open a 252-bed temporary facility, which at its peak carried a census of 48 patients, with no on-site mortality or cardiac arrests, before it was closed in June 2021 – ready to reopen if necessary. It also served as Baltimore’s major site for polymerase chain reaction COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, and monoclonal antibody infusions, along with medical research.

“My belief at the time we started was that my entire 20-year career as a hospitalist had prepared me for the challenge of opening a COVID field hospital,” Dr. Howell said. “I had learned how to build clinical programs. The difference was that instead of months and years to build a program, we only had a few weeks.”

His first request was to bring on an associate medical director for the field hospital, Melinda E. Kantsiper, MD, a hospitalist and director of clinical operations in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview. She became the field hospital’s CMO when Dr. Howell moved to SHM. “As hospitalists, we are trained to care for the patient in front of us while at the same time creating systems that can adjust to rapidly changing circumstances,” Dr. Kantsiper said. “We did what was asked and set up a field hospital that cared for a total of 1,500 COVID patients.”

Courtesy Johns Hopkins Medicine

“They gave us a lot of autonomy and helped us break down barriers. They gave us the political capital to say proper PPE was absolutely essential. As hard and devastating as the pandemic has been, one take-away is that we showed that we can be more flexible and elastic in response to actual needs than we used to think.”

Range of challenges

Among the questions that need to be answered by a field hospital’s planners, the first is ‘where to put it?’ The answer is, hopefully, someplace not too far away, large enough, with ready access to supplies and intake. The next question is ‘who is the patient?’ Clinicians must determine who goes to the field hospital versus who stays at the standing hospital. How sick should these patients be? And when do they need to go back to the permanent hospital? Can staff be trained to recognize when patients in the field hospital are starting to decompensate? The EPIC Deterioration Index³ is a proprietary prediction model that was used by more than a hundred hospitals during the pandemic.

The hospitalist team may develop specific inclusion and exclusion criteria – for example, don’t admit patients who are receiving oxygen therapy above a certain threshold or who are hemodynamically unstable. These criteria should reflect the capacity of the field hospital and the needs of the permanent hospital. At Michigan, as at other field hospital sites, the goal was to offer a step-down or postacute setting for patients with COVID-19 who were too sick to return home but didn’t need acute or ICU-level care, thereby freeing up beds at the permanent hospital for patients who were sicker.

Other questions: What is the process for admissions and discharges? How will patients be transported? What kind of staffing is needed, and what levels of care will be provided? What about rehabilitation services, or palliative care? What about patients with substance abuse or psychiatric comorbidities?

“Are we going to do paper charting? How will that work out for long-term documentation and billing?” Dr. Bell said. A clear reporting structure and communication pathways are essential. Among the other operational processes to address, outlined in Dr. Bell’s article, are orientation and training, PPE donning and doffing procedures, the code or rapid response team, patient and staff food and nutrition, infection control protocols, pharmacy services, access to radiology, rounding procedures, staff support, and the morgue.

One other issue that shouldn’t be overlooked is health equity in the field hospital. “Providing safe and equitable care should be the focus. Thinking who goes to the field hospital should be done within a health equity framework,” Dr. Bell said.⁴ She also wonders if field hospital planners are sharing their experience with colleagues across the country and developing more collaborative relationships with other hospitals in their communities.

“Field hospitals can be different things,” Dr. Bell said. “The important take-home is it doesn’t have to be in a tent or a parking garage, which can be suboptimal.” In many cases, it may be better to focus on finding unused space within the hospital – whether a lobby, staff lounge, or unoccupied unit – closer to personnel, supplies, pharmacy, and the like. “I think the pandemic showed us how unprepared we were as a health care system, and how much more we need to do in preparation for future crises.”

Limits to the temporary hospital

In New York City, which had the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak during the first surge in the spring of 2020, a 1,000-bed field hospital was opened at the Jacob Javits Center in March 2020 and closed that June. “I was in the field hospital early, in March and April, when our hospitals were temporarily overrun,” said hospitalist Mona Krouss, MD, FACP, CPPS, NYC Health + Hospitals’ director of patient safety. “My role was to figure out how to get patients on our medical floors into these field hospitals, with responsibility for helping to revise admission criteria,” she said.

“No one knew how horrible it would become. This was so unanticipated, so difficult to operationalize. What they were able to create was amazing, but there were just too many barriers to have it work smoothly,” Dr. Krouss said.

Courtesy of Renown Regional Medical Center

Replicating hospital work flows

“We ensured that everybody who needed to be within the walls of the permanent hospitals was able to stay there,” said Dr. Lee’s colleague, hospitalist Adnan (Eddy) Akbar, MD. “The postacute system we ordinarily rely on was no longer accepting patients. Other hospitals in the area were able to manage within their capacity because Renown’s field hospital could admit excess patients. We tried to replicate in the field hospital, as much as possible, the work flows and systems of our main hospital.”

When the field hospital finally opened, Dr. Akbar said, “we had a good feeling. We were ready. If something more catastrophic had come down, we were ready to care for more patients. In the field hospital you have to keep monitoring your work flow – almost on a daily basis. But we felt privileged to be working for a system where you knew you can go and care for everyone who needed care.”

One upside of the field hospital experience for participating clinicians, Dr. Lee added, is the opportunity to practice creatively. “The downside is it’s extremely expensive, and has consequences for the mental health of staff. Like so many of these things, it wore on people over time – such as all the time spent donning and doffing protective equipment. And recently the patients have become a lot less gracious.”

Amy Baughman, MD, a hospitalist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was co-medical director of the postacute care section of a 1,000-bed field hospital, Boston Hope Medical Center, opened in April 2020 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The other half of the facility was dedicated to undomiciled COVID-19 patients who had no place else to go. Peak census was around 100 patients, housed on four units, each with a clinical team led by a physician.

Partners HealthCare

References

1. Horowitz J. Italy’s health care system groans under coronavirus – a warning to the world. New York Times. 2020 Mar 12.

2. Bell SA et al. T-Minus 10 days: The role of an academic medical institution in field hospital planning. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2021 Feb 18:1-6. doi: 10.1017/S1049023X21000224.

3. Singh K et al. Evaluating a widely implemented proprietary deterioration index model among hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2021 Jul;18(7):1129-37. doi: 10.1513/AnnalsATS.202006-698OC.

4. Bell SA et al. Alternate care sites during COVID-19 pandemic: Policy implications for pandemic surge planning. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2021 Jul 23;1-3. doi: 10.1017/dmp.2021.241.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’s terrifying first wave in the spring of 2020, dozens of hospitals in high-incidence areas either planned or opened temporary, emergency field hospitals to cover anticipated demand for beds beyond the capacity of local permanent hospitals.

Chastened by images of overwhelmed health care systems in Northern Italy and other hard-hit areas,¹ the planners used available modeling tools and estimates for projecting maximum potential need in worst-case scenarios. Some of these temporary hospitals never opened. Others opened in convention centers, parking garages, or parking lot tents, and ended up being used to a lesser degree than the worst-case scenarios.

But those who participated in the planning – including, in many cases, hospitalists – believe they created alternate care site manuals that could be quickly revived in the event of future COVID surges or other, similar crises. Better to plan for too much, they say, than not plan for enough.

Field hospitals or alternate care sites are defined in a recent journal article in Prehospital Disaster Medicine as “locations that can be converted to provide either inpatient and/or outpatient health services when existing facilities are compromised by a hazard impact or the volume of patients exceeds available capacity and/or capabilities.”²

University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation

The lead author of that report, Sue Anne Bell, PhD, FNP-BC, a disaster expert and assistant professor of nursing at the University of Michigan (UM), was one of five members of the leadership team for planning UM’s field hospital. They used an organizational unit structure based on the U.S. military’s staffing structure, with their work organized around six units of planning: personnel and labor, security, clinical operations, logistics and supply, planning and training, and communications. This team planned a 519-bed step-down care facility, the Michigan Medicine Field Hospital, for a 73,000-foot indoor track and performance facility at the university, three miles from UM’s main hospital. The aim was to provide safe care in a resource-limited environment.

“We were prepared, but the need never materialized as the peak of COVID cases started to subside,” Dr. Bell said. The team was ready to open within days using a “T-Minus” framework of days remaining on an official countdown clock. But when the need and deadlines kept getting pushed back, that gave them more time to develop clearer procedures.

Two Michigan Medicine hospitalists, Christopher Smith, MD, and David Paje, MD, MPH, both professors at UM’s medical school, were intimately involved in the process. “I was the medical director for the respiratory care unit that was opened for COVID patients, so I was pulled in to assist in the field hospital planning,” said Dr. Smith.

Baltimore builds a convention center hospital

A COVID-19 field hospital was planned and executed at an exhibit hall in the Baltimore Convention Center, starting in March 2020 under the leadership of Johns Hopkins Bayview hospitalist Eric Howell, MD, MHM, who eventually handed over responsibilities as chief medical officer when he assumed the position of CEO for the Society of Hospital Medicine in July of that year.

Courtesy Dr. Eric Howell

Hopkins collaborated with the University of Maryland health system and state leaders, including the Secretary of Health, to open a 252-bed temporary facility, which at its peak carried a census of 48 patients, with no on-site mortality or cardiac arrests, before it was closed in June 2021 – ready to reopen if necessary. It also served as Baltimore’s major site for polymerase chain reaction COVID-19 testing, vaccinations, and monoclonal antibody infusions, along with medical research.

“My belief at the time we started was that my entire 20-year career as a hospitalist had prepared me for the challenge of opening a COVID field hospital,” Dr. Howell said. “I had learned how to build clinical programs. The difference was that instead of months and years to build a program, we only had a few weeks.”

His first request was to bring on an associate medical director for the field hospital, Melinda E. Kantsiper, MD, a hospitalist and director of clinical operations in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Johns Hopkins Bayview. She became the field hospital’s CMO when Dr. Howell moved to SHM. “As hospitalists, we are trained to care for the patient in front of us while at the same time creating systems that can adjust to rapidly changing circumstances,” Dr. Kantsiper said. “We did what was asked and set up a field hospital that cared for a total of 1,500 COVID patients.”

Courtesy Johns Hopkins Medicine

“They gave us a lot of autonomy and helped us break down barriers. They gave us the political capital to say proper PPE was absolutely essential. As hard and devastating as the pandemic has been, one take-away is that we showed that we can be more flexible and elastic in response to actual needs than we used to think.”

Range of challenges

Among the questions that need to be answered by a field hospital’s planners, the first is ‘where to put it?’ The answer is, hopefully, someplace not too far away, large enough, with ready access to supplies and intake. The next question is ‘who is the patient?’ Clinicians must determine who goes to the field hospital versus who stays at the standing hospital. How sick should these patients be? And when do they need to go back to the permanent hospital? Can staff be trained to recognize when patients in the field hospital are starting to decompensate? The EPIC Deterioration Index³ is a proprietary prediction model that was used by more than a hundred hospitals during the pandemic.

The hospitalist team may develop specific inclusion and exclusion criteria – for example, don’t admit patients who are receiving oxygen therapy above a certain threshold or who are hemodynamically unstable. These criteria should reflect the capacity of the field hospital and the needs of the permanent hospital. At Michigan, as at other field hospital sites, the goal was to offer a step-down or postacute setting for patients with COVID-19 who were too sick to return home but didn’t need acute or ICU-level care, thereby freeing up beds at the permanent hospital for patients who were sicker.

Other questions: What is the process for admissions and discharges? How will patients be transported? What kind of staffing is needed, and what levels of care will be provided? What about rehabilitation services, or palliative care? What about patients with substance abuse or psychiatric comorbidities?

“Are we going to do paper charting? How will that work out for long-term documentation and billing?” Dr. Bell said. A clear reporting structure and communication pathways are essential. Among the other operational processes to address, outlined in Dr. Bell’s article, are orientation and training, PPE donning and doffing procedures, the code or rapid response team, patient and staff food and nutrition, infection control protocols, pharmacy services, access to radiology, rounding procedures, staff support, and the morgue.

One other issue that shouldn’t be overlooked is health equity in the field hospital. “Providing safe and equitable care should be the focus. Thinking who goes to the field hospital should be done within a health equity framework,” Dr. Bell said.⁴ She also wonders if field hospital planners are sharing their experience with colleagues across the country and developing more collaborative relationships with other hospitals in their communities.

“Field hospitals can be different things,” Dr. Bell said. “The important take-home is it doesn’t have to be in a tent or a parking garage, which can be suboptimal.” In many cases, it may be better to focus on finding unused space within the hospital – whether a lobby, staff lounge, or unoccupied unit – closer to personnel, supplies, pharmacy, and the like. “I think the pandemic showed us how unprepared we were as a health care system, and how much more we need to do in preparation for future crises.”

Limits to the temporary hospital

In New York City, which had the country’s worst COVID-19 outbreak during the first surge in the spring of 2020, a 1,000-bed field hospital was opened at the Jacob Javits Center in March 2020 and closed that June. “I was in the field hospital early, in March and April, when our hospitals were temporarily overrun,” said hospitalist Mona Krouss, MD, FACP, CPPS, NYC Health + Hospitals’ director of patient safety. “My role was to figure out how to get patients on our medical floors into these field hospitals, with responsibility for helping to revise admission criteria,” she said.

“No one knew how horrible it would become. This was so unanticipated, so difficult to operationalize. What they were able to create was amazing, but there were just too many barriers to have it work smoothly,” Dr. Krouss said.

Courtesy of Renown Regional Medical Center

Replicating hospital work flows

“We ensured that everybody who needed to be within the walls of the permanent hospitals was able to stay there,” said Dr. Lee’s colleague, hospitalist Adnan (Eddy) Akbar, MD. “The postacute system we ordinarily rely on was no longer accepting patients. Other hospitals in the area were able to manage within their capacity because Renown’s field hospital could admit excess patients. We tried to replicate in the field hospital, as much as possible, the work flows and systems of our main hospital.”

When the field hospital finally opened, Dr. Akbar said, “we had a good feeling. We were ready. If something more catastrophic had come down, we were ready to care for more patients. In the field hospital you have to keep monitoring your work flow – almost on a daily basis. But we felt privileged to be working for a system where you knew you can go and care for everyone who needed care.”

One upside of the field hospital experience for participating clinicians, Dr. Lee added, is the opportunity to practice creatively. “The downside is it’s extremely expensive, and has consequences for the mental health of staff. Like so many of these things, it wore on people over time – such as all the time spent donning and doffing protective equipment. And recently the patients have become a lot less gracious.”

Amy Baughman, MD, a hospitalist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was co-medical director of the postacute care section of a 1,000-bed field hospital, Boston Hope Medical Center, opened in April 2020 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. The other half of the facility was dedicated to undomiciled COVID-19 patients who had no place else to go. Peak census was around 100 patients, housed on four units, each with a clinical team led by a physician.

Partners HealthCare

References

1. Horowitz J. Italy’s health care system groans under coronavirus – a warning to the world. New York Times. 2020 Mar 12.

2. Bell SA et al. T-Minus 10 days: The role of an academic medical institution in field hospital planning. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2021 Feb 18:1-6. doi: 10.1017/S1049023X21000224.

3. Singh K et al. Evaluating a widely implemented proprietary deterioration index model among hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2021 Jul;18(7):1129-37. doi: 10.1513/AnnalsATS.202006-698OC.

4. Bell SA et al. Alternate care sites during COVID-19 pandemic: Policy implications for pandemic surge planning. Disaster Med Public Health Prep. 2021 Jul 23;1-3. doi: 10.1017/dmp.2021.241.

Editor’s note: Hospitalists told us about process changes that their teams have implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shyam Odeti, MD, SFHM

Ballad Health (Bristol, Tenn.)(Dr. Odeti was a hospitalist at Ballad Health during the period he describes below. He is currently chief of hospital medicine at Carilion Clinic, Roanoke, Va.)

Ballad Health is a 21-hospital health system serving 1.2 million population in 21 counties of rural Appalachia (northeast Tennessee, southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, and Kentucky). We saw a significant spike in COVID-19 numbers beginning in October 2020. We were at a 7.9% test positivity rate and 89 COVID-19 hospitalizations on Oct. 1, which rapidly increased to over 18% positivity rate and over 250 hospitalizations by mid-November. This alarming trend created concerns about handling the future inpatient volumes in an already strained health system.

There were some unique challenges to this region that were contributing to the increased hospitalizations. A significant part of the population we serve in this region has low health literacy, low socioeconomic status, and problems with transportation. Telehealth in an outpatient setting was rudimentary in parts of this region.

Ballad Health developed Safe At Home to identify lower-acuity COVID-19 patients and transition them to the home setting safely. This in turn would prevent their readmissions or return visits to the ED by implementing comprehensive oversight to their disease course. We achieved this through a collaborative approach of the existing teams, case management, telenurse team, primary care providers, and hospitalist-led transitional care. We leveraged the newly implemented EHR Epic and telehealth under the leadership of Ballad Health’s chief medical information officer, Dr. Mark Wilkinson.

Among the patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in ED and urgent care, low acuity cases were identified and enrolled into Safe At Home. Patients were provided with a pulse oximeter, thermometer, and incentive spirometer. They received phone calls the next 2 days from the telenurse team for a comprehensive interview, followed by daily phone calls during the first week. If no concerns were raised initially, then calls were spaced to every 3 days after that for up to 2 weeks. Any complaints or alarming symptoms would trigger a telehealth visit with primary care physicians, transitional care clinics, or a hospitalist.

The Safe At Home program was highly successful – in the past 5 months, over 1,500 patients were enrolled and hundreds of admissions were likely avoided. As we feared, the positivity rate in our region went close to 35% and inpatient COVID-19 census was over 350, with ICU utilization over 92%. If not for our innovative solution, this pandemic could have easily paralyzed health care in our region. Our patients also felt safe, as they were monitored daily and had help one call away, 24/7.

This innovation has brought solutions through technological advancements and process improvement. Safe At Home was also instrumental in breaking down silos and developing a culture of collaboration and cohesiveness among the inpatient, outpatient, and virtual teams of the health system. Lessons learned from this initiative can be easily replicated in the management of several chronic diseases to provide safe and affordable care to our patients in the comfort of their homes.
 

Vasundara Singh, MBBS

Mount Sinai West (New York)

At the onset of the pandemic in New York, our medium-sized midtown hospital used personal protective equipment briskly. One reason identified was the failure to cohort COVID-19 patients on a single floor. The other more important cause was that medicine teams in our hospital have patients scattered throughout the hospital in a nongeographic model across four different floors. Within 2 weeks, administration and hospital medicine leadership developed a geographic model. We started cohorting all COVID-19 positive patients on separate floors from negative patients. A geographic physician team model was also developed, which allowed physicians and nurses to don and doff at the entry and exit of each COVID-19 unit.

After the pandemic surge, hospital medicine and internal medicine residency program leadership made the collective decision to continue the geographic model for inpatient care. Care providers enjoyed working in a unit-based model, and noted increases in efficiency while rounding. Each of our four medicine floors has 36-40 beds, with variable occupancy. We restructured our resident teams and physician assistant teams by geography. Our outgoing chief residents led the change in May, designing a resident schedule to accommodate for a resident on each team to be available to admit and provide coverage until 8 p.m. each evening on their respective floors. The hospital medicine leadership put together a committee comprising representation of all stakeholders in this large transition of systems: attending hospitalists, physician assistants, chief residents, nurse managers, bed assignment, and administration. Since the transition and resumption of normal inpatient activity, we have encountered and addressed multiple concerns. Some notable hurdles in this transition included the high throughput on our telemetry team, movement of patients by bed board or nursing without involving the physicians in the decision, and variable nursing staffing that impacts teaching team caps because of geographic model.

This transition is very much still a work in progress, yet some benefits are already obvious. It has made bedside rounding more appealing and uncomplicated. Physicians in training learn very well at the bedside by role modeling. Greater acceptance of bedside rounding also affords the opportunity to teach physical exam skills, a dying art amongst newer generations of doctors. Another large gain is being able to involve nursing in bedside rounds, discussions, and decision-making. Finally, coordination with ancillary staff including social work and case management has become seamless as a result of having an entire floor to ourselves.

In summary, the silver lining of this pernicious pandemic at our hospital has been a transition to a geographic model for inpatient care. This is considered to be the gold standard for inpatient care across multiple health systems, and we hope to continue to refine this geographic model of care. Next steps would involve developing capabilities with flex acuity beds on each unit so that no matter what the patients need they can stay in one place.
 

Marina Farah, MD, MHA

Sound Physicians (Tacoma, Wash.)

With hospital programs in over 40 states, Sound Physicians has played an important role in the COVID-19 pandemic, treating approximately 6% of all COVID hospitalizations nationwide. To meet the needs of the crisis, Sound relied on innovation to expand coverage and improve outcomes at facilities across the country. Of one particular note, Sound Telemedicine partnered with the University of Maryland Medical System to open the state’s first COVID-only hospital. In March 2020, the UMMS needed to care for an emerging cohort of COVID-19 patients while maintaining high-quality care and minimizing exposure for non-COVID patients.

Sound collaborated with UMMS to rapidly reopen the University of Maryland Laurel Medical Center for COVID-only care, staffing the hospital with Sound’s telehospitalists. A model based on daily rounding delivered 100% by telemedicine providers and flexible staffing available 24/7 would let the program scale up or down to meet volume demands. Onsite physician support would be limited to one admitting doctor and a nocturnist. The COVID-only facility allowed a small group of doctors, nurses, and technicians to focus exclusively on an emerging disease, honing critical skills for treating COVID-19 patients.

Immediate benefits yielded big results. UMLMC’s capacity allowed UMMS to funnel COVID patients into fewer of their regional hospitals, limiting the risk of exposure. Rapid deployment got UMMS ahead of the surge, taking stress off other hospitals in the system and 24/7 telehospitalist coverage proved to be a successful long-term staffing strategy for UMLMC. Long-term benefits were recognized too. Sound’s staffing model and clinical processes significantly improved quality of care. Mortality rates dropped from 18% to 9% during the initial 60 days of the program. Vaccinations shifted COVID-19 needs, however, due to improvements in care and the flexibility offered, telemedicine remains an integral part of the UMMS’s long-term strategy
 

Emory Healthcare division of hospital medicine (Atlanta)

(Comments compiled by James Kim, MD, assistant professor in the division of hospital medicine) Ingrid Pinzon, MD, FACP Emory Johns Creek (Ga.) Hospital

When COVID-19 started, one of the things called to my attention was the disparity in education for the Hispanic population. Unfortunately, COVID showed how in our hospitals there is a lack of instructions and education in Spanish.

We started educating our Hispanic community with Facebook lives via the Latin American Association. I was also invited to the different Spanish news stations (Telemundo and Univision). I also educated this community through food drives, where I taught about the use of face masks, social distancing, and hand hygiene.

Reena Hemrajani, MD

Grady Memorial Hospital

At Grady, we transitioned our weekly educational conferences into virtual events, and this has increased our attendance, as more off-service people are likely to attend when they can log on remotely. This has also allowed us to record these sessions for later viewing by those were unable to make it in real time.

Yelena Burklin, MD, FHM

Emory University Hospital Midtown

In our Midtown group, we have started a few initiatives that we will continue post COVID. Hybrid didactic lectures have had great success with excellent attendance when our didactic sessions (lunch and learns, journal clubs, core lectures for step-down unit refresher series) have been conducted virtually.

During the pandemic’s height, when all resources were dedicated to COVID-19 patient care, there was a particular need to cognitively separate from “all things COVID” and provide additional topics to learn about, such as review of the management of different types of shock, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, sepsis, liver cirrhosis, etc. Attendance to these non–COVID-19 sessions was just as high.

We had a number of stressful and near-death experiences that tested our resilience, professional integrity, and overall wellness. These reflections prompted us to invite psychiatrists to one of the in-person–only sessions so that an informal conversation could be afforded in a safe space. Those hospitalists who felt the need to discuss their issues further received additional support and instructions from a subspecialist.

Ray Dantes, MD

Emory University Hospital Midtown

Post COVID, we will certainly utilize a hybrid approach to the didactic sessions when patient sensitive information is not being discussed. We will also preserve the continuity in addressing wellness and resilience, particularly, when our Midtown hospitalists had to work a lot of extra hours to cover the growing need at the time of pandemic, and need to emotionally decompress post pandemic. We are also taking infection control more seriously, and not coming to work with upper respiratory infections.

Rajasree Roy, MD

Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital

At ESJH, we initiated a telemedicine pilot for our hospitalist team in order to sustain our service given census surge and physician illness.

Sara Millwee, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC

Emory chief of advanced practice providers

To help reduce exposure to COVID, our advanced practice providers (APPs) admitted patients from the ED (as they did pre-COVID) to the hospital medicine service, but the physicians administratively signed the note/orders. Emory Healthcare bylaws specify that patients are seen by a physician within 24 hours of admission. During the pandemic, at the time of admission, the APP discussed plan of care with the physician, but the patient was only seen by the APP upon initial evaluation/admission, as opposed to the physician and APP pre-COVID. This improved productivity, and facilitated communication and collaboration between APPs and physicians. This also fostered an environment where APPs were practicing at the top of their licenses and improved job satisfaction.

Additionally, across the hospital medicine division, several APPs were utilized from other divisions to assist with admissions and cross cover. As the volume was at incredibly high levels, this improved the workload and burden of the hospital medicine providers. The displaced APPs were utilized at several facilities and worked under the guidance and supervision of hospital medicine providers. Moving forward, this has prompted leadership to look at utilizing APPs from other divisions as “PRN” providers as well.

Editor’s note: Hospitalists told us about process changes that their teams have implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shyam Odeti, MD, SFHM

Ballad Health (Bristol, Tenn.)(Dr. Odeti was a hospitalist at Ballad Health during the period he describes below. He is currently chief of hospital medicine at Carilion Clinic, Roanoke, Va.)

Ballad Health is a 21-hospital health system serving 1.2 million population in 21 counties of rural Appalachia (northeast Tennessee, southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, and Kentucky). We saw a significant spike in COVID-19 numbers beginning in October 2020. We were at a 7.9% test positivity rate and 89 COVID-19 hospitalizations on Oct. 1, which rapidly increased to over 18% positivity rate and over 250 hospitalizations by mid-November. This alarming trend created concerns about handling the future inpatient volumes in an already strained health system.

There were some unique challenges to this region that were contributing to the increased hospitalizations. A significant part of the population we serve in this region has low health literacy, low socioeconomic status, and problems with transportation. Telehealth in an outpatient setting was rudimentary in parts of this region.

Ballad Health developed Safe At Home to identify lower-acuity COVID-19 patients and transition them to the home setting safely. This in turn would prevent their readmissions or return visits to the ED by implementing comprehensive oversight to their disease course. We achieved this through a collaborative approach of the existing teams, case management, telenurse team, primary care providers, and hospitalist-led transitional care. We leveraged the newly implemented EHR Epic and telehealth under the leadership of Ballad Health’s chief medical information officer, Dr. Mark Wilkinson.

Among the patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in ED and urgent care, low acuity cases were identified and enrolled into Safe At Home. Patients were provided with a pulse oximeter, thermometer, and incentive spirometer. They received phone calls the next 2 days from the telenurse team for a comprehensive interview, followed by daily phone calls during the first week. If no concerns were raised initially, then calls were spaced to every 3 days after that for up to 2 weeks. Any complaints or alarming symptoms would trigger a telehealth visit with primary care physicians, transitional care clinics, or a hospitalist.

The Safe At Home program was highly successful – in the past 5 months, over 1,500 patients were enrolled and hundreds of admissions were likely avoided. As we feared, the positivity rate in our region went close to 35% and inpatient COVID-19 census was over 350, with ICU utilization over 92%. If not for our innovative solution, this pandemic could have easily paralyzed health care in our region. Our patients also felt safe, as they were monitored daily and had help one call away, 24/7.

This innovation has brought solutions through technological advancements and process improvement. Safe At Home was also instrumental in breaking down silos and developing a culture of collaboration and cohesiveness among the inpatient, outpatient, and virtual teams of the health system. Lessons learned from this initiative can be easily replicated in the management of several chronic diseases to provide safe and affordable care to our patients in the comfort of their homes.
 

Vasundara Singh, MBBS

Mount Sinai West (New York)

At the onset of the pandemic in New York, our medium-sized midtown hospital used personal protective equipment briskly. One reason identified was the failure to cohort COVID-19 patients on a single floor. The other more important cause was that medicine teams in our hospital have patients scattered throughout the hospital in a nongeographic model across four different floors. Within 2 weeks, administration and hospital medicine leadership developed a geographic model. We started cohorting all COVID-19 positive patients on separate floors from negative patients. A geographic physician team model was also developed, which allowed physicians and nurses to don and doff at the entry and exit of each COVID-19 unit.

After the pandemic surge, hospital medicine and internal medicine residency program leadership made the collective decision to continue the geographic model for inpatient care. Care providers enjoyed working in a unit-based model, and noted increases in efficiency while rounding. Each of our four medicine floors has 36-40 beds, with variable occupancy. We restructured our resident teams and physician assistant teams by geography. Our outgoing chief residents led the change in May, designing a resident schedule to accommodate for a resident on each team to be available to admit and provide coverage until 8 p.m. each evening on their respective floors. The hospital medicine leadership put together a committee comprising representation of all stakeholders in this large transition of systems: attending hospitalists, physician assistants, chief residents, nurse managers, bed assignment, and administration. Since the transition and resumption of normal inpatient activity, we have encountered and addressed multiple concerns. Some notable hurdles in this transition included the high throughput on our telemetry team, movement of patients by bed board or nursing without involving the physicians in the decision, and variable nursing staffing that impacts teaching team caps because of geographic model.

This transition is very much still a work in progress, yet some benefits are already obvious. It has made bedside rounding more appealing and uncomplicated. Physicians in training learn very well at the bedside by role modeling. Greater acceptance of bedside rounding also affords the opportunity to teach physical exam skills, a dying art amongst newer generations of doctors. Another large gain is being able to involve nursing in bedside rounds, discussions, and decision-making. Finally, coordination with ancillary staff including social work and case management has become seamless as a result of having an entire floor to ourselves.

In summary, the silver lining of this pernicious pandemic at our hospital has been a transition to a geographic model for inpatient care. This is considered to be the gold standard for inpatient care across multiple health systems, and we hope to continue to refine this geographic model of care. Next steps would involve developing capabilities with flex acuity beds on each unit so that no matter what the patients need they can stay in one place.
 

Marina Farah, MD, MHA

Sound Physicians (Tacoma, Wash.)

With hospital programs in over 40 states, Sound Physicians has played an important role in the COVID-19 pandemic, treating approximately 6% of all COVID hospitalizations nationwide. To meet the needs of the crisis, Sound relied on innovation to expand coverage and improve outcomes at facilities across the country. Of one particular note, Sound Telemedicine partnered with the University of Maryland Medical System to open the state’s first COVID-only hospital. In March 2020, the UMMS needed to care for an emerging cohort of COVID-19 patients while maintaining high-quality care and minimizing exposure for non-COVID patients.

Sound collaborated with UMMS to rapidly reopen the University of Maryland Laurel Medical Center for COVID-only care, staffing the hospital with Sound’s telehospitalists. A model based on daily rounding delivered 100% by telemedicine providers and flexible staffing available 24/7 would let the program scale up or down to meet volume demands. Onsite physician support would be limited to one admitting doctor and a nocturnist. The COVID-only facility allowed a small group of doctors, nurses, and technicians to focus exclusively on an emerging disease, honing critical skills for treating COVID-19 patients.

Immediate benefits yielded big results. UMLMC’s capacity allowed UMMS to funnel COVID patients into fewer of their regional hospitals, limiting the risk of exposure. Rapid deployment got UMMS ahead of the surge, taking stress off other hospitals in the system and 24/7 telehospitalist coverage proved to be a successful long-term staffing strategy for UMLMC. Long-term benefits were recognized too. Sound’s staffing model and clinical processes significantly improved quality of care. Mortality rates dropped from 18% to 9% during the initial 60 days of the program. Vaccinations shifted COVID-19 needs, however, due to improvements in care and the flexibility offered, telemedicine remains an integral part of the UMMS’s long-term strategy
 

Emory Healthcare division of hospital medicine (Atlanta)

(Comments compiled by James Kim, MD, assistant professor in the division of hospital medicine) Ingrid Pinzon, MD, FACP Emory Johns Creek (Ga.) Hospital

When COVID-19 started, one of the things called to my attention was the disparity in education for the Hispanic population. Unfortunately, COVID showed how in our hospitals there is a lack of instructions and education in Spanish.

We started educating our Hispanic community with Facebook lives via the Latin American Association. I was also invited to the different Spanish news stations (Telemundo and Univision). I also educated this community through food drives, where I taught about the use of face masks, social distancing, and hand hygiene.

Reena Hemrajani, MD

Grady Memorial Hospital

At Grady, we transitioned our weekly educational conferences into virtual events, and this has increased our attendance, as more off-service people are likely to attend when they can log on remotely. This has also allowed us to record these sessions for later viewing by those were unable to make it in real time.

Yelena Burklin, MD, FHM

Emory University Hospital Midtown

In our Midtown group, we have started a few initiatives that we will continue post COVID. Hybrid didactic lectures have had great success with excellent attendance when our didactic sessions (lunch and learns, journal clubs, core lectures for step-down unit refresher series) have been conducted virtually.

During the pandemic’s height, when all resources were dedicated to COVID-19 patient care, there was a particular need to cognitively separate from “all things COVID” and provide additional topics to learn about, such as review of the management of different types of shock, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, sepsis, liver cirrhosis, etc. Attendance to these non–COVID-19 sessions was just as high.

We had a number of stressful and near-death experiences that tested our resilience, professional integrity, and overall wellness. These reflections prompted us to invite psychiatrists to one of the in-person–only sessions so that an informal conversation could be afforded in a safe space. Those hospitalists who felt the need to discuss their issues further received additional support and instructions from a subspecialist.

Ray Dantes, MD

Emory University Hospital Midtown

Post COVID, we will certainly utilize a hybrid approach to the didactic sessions when patient sensitive information is not being discussed. We will also preserve the continuity in addressing wellness and resilience, particularly, when our Midtown hospitalists had to work a lot of extra hours to cover the growing need at the time of pandemic, and need to emotionally decompress post pandemic. We are also taking infection control more seriously, and not coming to work with upper respiratory infections.

Rajasree Roy, MD

Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital

At ESJH, we initiated a telemedicine pilot for our hospitalist team in order to sustain our service given census surge and physician illness.

Sara Millwee, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC

Emory chief of advanced practice providers

To help reduce exposure to COVID, our advanced practice providers (APPs) admitted patients from the ED (as they did pre-COVID) to the hospital medicine service, but the physicians administratively signed the note/orders. Emory Healthcare bylaws specify that patients are seen by a physician within 24 hours of admission. During the pandemic, at the time of admission, the APP discussed plan of care with the physician, but the patient was only seen by the APP upon initial evaluation/admission, as opposed to the physician and APP pre-COVID. This improved productivity, and facilitated communication and collaboration between APPs and physicians. This also fostered an environment where APPs were practicing at the top of their licenses and improved job satisfaction.

Additionally, across the hospital medicine division, several APPs were utilized from other divisions to assist with admissions and cross cover. As the volume was at incredibly high levels, this improved the workload and burden of the hospital medicine providers. The displaced APPs were utilized at several facilities and worked under the guidance and supervision of hospital medicine providers. Moving forward, this has prompted leadership to look at utilizing APPs from other divisions as “PRN” providers as well.

Editor’s note: Hospitalists told us about process changes that their teams have implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Shyam Odeti, MD, SFHM

Ballad Health (Bristol, Tenn.)(Dr. Odeti was a hospitalist at Ballad Health during the period he describes below. He is currently chief of hospital medicine at Carilion Clinic, Roanoke, Va.)

Ballad Health is a 21-hospital health system serving 1.2 million population in 21 counties of rural Appalachia (northeast Tennessee, southwest Virginia, western North Carolina, and Kentucky). We saw a significant spike in COVID-19 numbers beginning in October 2020. We were at a 7.9% test positivity rate and 89 COVID-19 hospitalizations on Oct. 1, which rapidly increased to over 18% positivity rate and over 250 hospitalizations by mid-November. This alarming trend created concerns about handling the future inpatient volumes in an already strained health system.

There were some unique challenges to this region that were contributing to the increased hospitalizations. A significant part of the population we serve in this region has low health literacy, low socioeconomic status, and problems with transportation. Telehealth in an outpatient setting was rudimentary in parts of this region.

Ballad Health developed Safe At Home to identify lower-acuity COVID-19 patients and transition them to the home setting safely. This in turn would prevent their readmissions or return visits to the ED by implementing comprehensive oversight to their disease course. We achieved this through a collaborative approach of the existing teams, case management, telenurse team, primary care providers, and hospitalist-led transitional care. We leveraged the newly implemented EHR Epic and telehealth under the leadership of Ballad Health’s chief medical information officer, Dr. Mark Wilkinson.

Among the patients diagnosed with COVID-19 in ED and urgent care, low acuity cases were identified and enrolled into Safe At Home. Patients were provided with a pulse oximeter, thermometer, and incentive spirometer. They received phone calls the next 2 days from the telenurse team for a comprehensive interview, followed by daily phone calls during the first week. If no concerns were raised initially, then calls were spaced to every 3 days after that for up to 2 weeks. Any complaints or alarming symptoms would trigger a telehealth visit with primary care physicians, transitional care clinics, or a hospitalist.

The Safe At Home program was highly successful – in the past 5 months, over 1,500 patients were enrolled and hundreds of admissions were likely avoided. As we feared, the positivity rate in our region went close to 35% and inpatient COVID-19 census was over 350, with ICU utilization over 92%. If not for our innovative solution, this pandemic could have easily paralyzed health care in our region. Our patients also felt safe, as they were monitored daily and had help one call away, 24/7.

This innovation has brought solutions through technological advancements and process improvement. Safe At Home was also instrumental in breaking down silos and developing a culture of collaboration and cohesiveness among the inpatient, outpatient, and virtual teams of the health system. Lessons learned from this initiative can be easily replicated in the management of several chronic diseases to provide safe and affordable care to our patients in the comfort of their homes.
 

Vasundara Singh, MBBS

Mount Sinai West (New York)

At the onset of the pandemic in New York, our medium-sized midtown hospital used personal protective equipment briskly. One reason identified was the failure to cohort COVID-19 patients on a single floor. The other more important cause was that medicine teams in our hospital have patients scattered throughout the hospital in a nongeographic model across four different floors. Within 2 weeks, administration and hospital medicine leadership developed a geographic model. We started cohorting all COVID-19 positive patients on separate floors from negative patients. A geographic physician team model was also developed, which allowed physicians and nurses to don and doff at the entry and exit of each COVID-19 unit.

After the pandemic surge, hospital medicine and internal medicine residency program leadership made the collective decision to continue the geographic model for inpatient care. Care providers enjoyed working in a unit-based model, and noted increases in efficiency while rounding. Each of our four medicine floors has 36-40 beds, with variable occupancy. We restructured our resident teams and physician assistant teams by geography. Our outgoing chief residents led the change in May, designing a resident schedule to accommodate for a resident on each team to be available to admit and provide coverage until 8 p.m. each evening on their respective floors. The hospital medicine leadership put together a committee comprising representation of all stakeholders in this large transition of systems: attending hospitalists, physician assistants, chief residents, nurse managers, bed assignment, and administration. Since the transition and resumption of normal inpatient activity, we have encountered and addressed multiple concerns. Some notable hurdles in this transition included the high throughput on our telemetry team, movement of patients by bed board or nursing without involving the physicians in the decision, and variable nursing staffing that impacts teaching team caps because of geographic model.

This transition is very much still a work in progress, yet some benefits are already obvious. It has made bedside rounding more appealing and uncomplicated. Physicians in training learn very well at the bedside by role modeling. Greater acceptance of bedside rounding also affords the opportunity to teach physical exam skills, a dying art amongst newer generations of doctors. Another large gain is being able to involve nursing in bedside rounds, discussions, and decision-making. Finally, coordination with ancillary staff including social work and case management has become seamless as a result of having an entire floor to ourselves.

In summary, the silver lining of this pernicious pandemic at our hospital has been a transition to a geographic model for inpatient care. This is considered to be the gold standard for inpatient care across multiple health systems, and we hope to continue to refine this geographic model of care. Next steps would involve developing capabilities with flex acuity beds on each unit so that no matter what the patients need they can stay in one place.
 

Marina Farah, MD, MHA

Sound Physicians (Tacoma, Wash.)

With hospital programs in over 40 states, Sound Physicians has played an important role in the COVID-19 pandemic, treating approximately 6% of all COVID hospitalizations nationwide. To meet the needs of the crisis, Sound relied on innovation to expand coverage and improve outcomes at facilities across the country. Of one particular note, Sound Telemedicine partnered with the University of Maryland Medical System to open the state’s first COVID-only hospital. In March 2020, the UMMS needed to care for an emerging cohort of COVID-19 patients while maintaining high-quality care and minimizing exposure for non-COVID patients.

Sound collaborated with UMMS to rapidly reopen the University of Maryland Laurel Medical Center for COVID-only care, staffing the hospital with Sound’s telehospitalists. A model based on daily rounding delivered 100% by telemedicine providers and flexible staffing available 24/7 would let the program scale up or down to meet volume demands. Onsite physician support would be limited to one admitting doctor and a nocturnist. The COVID-only facility allowed a small group of doctors, nurses, and technicians to focus exclusively on an emerging disease, honing critical skills for treating COVID-19 patients.

Immediate benefits yielded big results. UMLMC’s capacity allowed UMMS to funnel COVID patients into fewer of their regional hospitals, limiting the risk of exposure. Rapid deployment got UMMS ahead of the surge, taking stress off other hospitals in the system and 24/7 telehospitalist coverage proved to be a successful long-term staffing strategy for UMLMC. Long-term benefits were recognized too. Sound’s staffing model and clinical processes significantly improved quality of care. Mortality rates dropped from 18% to 9% during the initial 60 days of the program. Vaccinations shifted COVID-19 needs, however, due to improvements in care and the flexibility offered, telemedicine remains an integral part of the UMMS’s long-term strategy
 

Emory Healthcare division of hospital medicine (Atlanta)

(Comments compiled by James Kim, MD, assistant professor in the division of hospital medicine) Ingrid Pinzon, MD, FACP Emory Johns Creek (Ga.) Hospital

When COVID-19 started, one of the things called to my attention was the disparity in education for the Hispanic population. Unfortunately, COVID showed how in our hospitals there is a lack of instructions and education in Spanish.

We started educating our Hispanic community with Facebook lives via the Latin American Association. I was also invited to the different Spanish news stations (Telemundo and Univision). I also educated this community through food drives, where I taught about the use of face masks, social distancing, and hand hygiene.

Reena Hemrajani, MD

Grady Memorial Hospital

At Grady, we transitioned our weekly educational conferences into virtual events, and this has increased our attendance, as more off-service people are likely to attend when they can log on remotely. This has also allowed us to record these sessions for later viewing by those were unable to make it in real time.

Yelena Burklin, MD, FHM

Emory University Hospital Midtown

In our Midtown group, we have started a few initiatives that we will continue post COVID. Hybrid didactic lectures have had great success with excellent attendance when our didactic sessions (lunch and learns, journal clubs, core lectures for step-down unit refresher series) have been conducted virtually.

During the pandemic’s height, when all resources were dedicated to COVID-19 patient care, there was a particular need to cognitively separate from “all things COVID” and provide additional topics to learn about, such as review of the management of different types of shock, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, sepsis, liver cirrhosis, etc. Attendance to these non–COVID-19 sessions was just as high.

We had a number of stressful and near-death experiences that tested our resilience, professional integrity, and overall wellness. These reflections prompted us to invite psychiatrists to one of the in-person–only sessions so that an informal conversation could be afforded in a safe space. Those hospitalists who felt the need to discuss their issues further received additional support and instructions from a subspecialist.

Ray Dantes, MD

Emory University Hospital Midtown

Post COVID, we will certainly utilize a hybrid approach to the didactic sessions when patient sensitive information is not being discussed. We will also preserve the continuity in addressing wellness and resilience, particularly, when our Midtown hospitalists had to work a lot of extra hours to cover the growing need at the time of pandemic, and need to emotionally decompress post pandemic. We are also taking infection control more seriously, and not coming to work with upper respiratory infections.

Rajasree Roy, MD

Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital

At ESJH, we initiated a telemedicine pilot for our hospitalist team in order to sustain our service given census surge and physician illness.

Sara Millwee, DNP, APRN, FNP-BC

Emory chief of advanced practice providers

To help reduce exposure to COVID, our advanced practice providers (APPs) admitted patients from the ED (as they did pre-COVID) to the hospital medicine service, but the physicians administratively signed the note/orders. Emory Healthcare bylaws specify that patients are seen by a physician within 24 hours of admission. During the pandemic, at the time of admission, the APP discussed plan of care with the physician, but the patient was only seen by the APP upon initial evaluation/admission, as opposed to the physician and APP pre-COVID. This improved productivity, and facilitated communication and collaboration between APPs and physicians. This also fostered an environment where APPs were practicing at the top of their licenses and improved job satisfaction.

Additionally, across the hospital medicine division, several APPs were utilized from other divisions to assist with admissions and cross cover. As the volume was at incredibly high levels, this improved the workload and burden of the hospital medicine providers. The displaced APPs were utilized at several facilities and worked under the guidance and supervision of hospital medicine providers. Moving forward, this has prompted leadership to look at utilizing APPs from other divisions as “PRN” providers as well.

“If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy” – Stephen Covey

A few years ago, while working in my office, a female colleague stopped by for a casual chat. During the course of the conversation, she noticed that I did not have any diplomas or certificates hanging on my office walls. Instead, there were clusters of pictures drawn by my children, family photos, and a white board with my “to-do” list. The only wall art was a print of Banksy’s “The Thinker Monkey,” which depicts a monkey with its fist to its chin similar to Rodin’s famous sculpture, “Le Penseur.”

When asked why I didn’t hang any diplomas or awards, I replied that I preferred to keep my office atmosphere light and fun, and to focus on future goals rather than past accomplishments. I could see her jaw tense. Her frustration appeared deep, but it was for reasons beyond just my self-righteous tone. She said, “You know, I appreciate your focus on future goals, but it’s a pretty privileged position to not have to worry about sharing your accomplishments publicly.”

What followed was a discussion that was generative, enlightening, uncomfortable, and necessary. I had never considered what I chose to hang (or not hang) on my office walls as a privilege, and that was exactly the point. She described numerous episodes when her accomplishments were overlooked or (worse) attributed to a male colleague because she was a woman. I began to understand that graceful self-promotion is not optional for many women in medicine, it is a necessary skill.

This is just one example of how my privilege as a male in medicine contributed to my ignorance of the gender inequities that my female coworkers have faced throughout their careers. My colleague showed a lot of grace by taking the time to help me navigate my male privilege in a constructive manner. I decided to learn more about gender inequities, and eventually determined that I was woefully inadequate as a male ally, not by refusal but by ignorance. I wanted to start earning my colleague’s trust that I would be an ally that she could count on.
 

Trustworthiness

I wanted to be a trustworthy ally, but what does that entail? Perhaps we can learn from medical education. Trust is a complex construct that is increasingly used as a framework for assessing medical students and residents, such as with entrustable professional activities (EPAs).^1,2 Multiple studies have examined the characteristics that make a learner “trustworthy” when determining how much supervision is required.^3-8 Ten Cate and Chen performed an interpretivist, narrative review to synthesize the medical education literature on learner trustworthiness in the past 15 years,⁹ developing five major themes that contribute to trustworthiness: Humility, Capability, Agency, Reliability, and Integrity. Let’s examine each of these through the lens of male allyship.

Humility

Humility involves knowing one’s limits, asking for help, and being receptive to feedback.⁹ The first thing men need to do is to put their egos in check and recognize that women do not need rescuing; they need partnership. Systemic inequities have led to men holding the majority of leadership positions and significant sociopolitical capital, and correcting these inequities is more feasible when those in leadership and positions of power contribute. Women don’t need knights in shining armor, they need collaborative activism.

Humility also means a willingness to admit fallibility and to ask for help. Men often don’t know what they don’t know (see my foibles in the opening). As David G. Smith, PhD, and W. Brad Johnson, PhD, write in their book, “Good Guys,” “There are no perfect allies. As you work to become a better ally for the women around you, you will undoubtedly make a mistake.”¹⁰ Men must accept feedback on their shortcomings as allies without feeling as though they are losing their sociopolitical standing. Allyship for women does not mean there is a devaluing of men. We must escape a “zero-sum” mindset. Mistakes are where growth happens, but only if we approach our missteps with humility.
 

Capability

Capability entails having the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be a strong ally. Allyship is not intuitive for most men for several reasons. Many men do not experience the same biases or systemic inequities that women do, and therefore perceive them less frequently. I want to acknowledge that men can be victims of other systemic biases such as those against one’s race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or any number of factors. Men who face inequities for these other reasons may be more cognizant of the biases women face. Even so, allyship is a skill that few men have been explicitly taught. Even if taught, few standard or organized mechanisms for feedback on allyship capability exist. How, then, can men become capable allies?

Just like in medical education, men must become self-directed learners who seek to build capability and receive feedback on their performance as allies. Men should seek allyship training through local women-in-medicine programs or organizations, or through the increasing number of national education options such as the recent ADVANCE PHM Gender Equity Symposium. As with learning any skill, men should go to the literature, seeking knowledge from experts in the field. I recommend starting with “Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace¹⁰ or “Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women.”¹¹ Both books, by Dr. Smith and Dr. Johnson, are great entry points into the gender allyship literature. Seek out other resources from local experts on gender equity and allyship. Both aforementioned books were recommended to me by a friend and gender equity expert; without her guidance I would not have known where to start.
 

Agency

Agency involves being proactive and engaged rather than passive or apathetic. Men must be enthusiastic allies who seek out opportunities to mentor and sponsor women rather than waiting for others to ask. Agency requires being curious and passionate about improving. Most men in medicine are not openly and explicitly misogynistic or sexist, but many are only passive when it comes to gender equity and allyship. Trustworthy allyship entails turning passive support into active change. Not sure how to start? A good first step is to ask female colleagues questions such as, “What can I do to be a better ally for you in the workplace?” or “What are some things at work that are most challenging to you, but I might not notice because I’m a man?” Curiosity is the springboard toward agency.

Reliability

Reliability means being conscientious, accountable, and doing what we say we will do. Nothing undermines trustworthiness faster than making a commitment and not following through. Allyship cannot be a show or an attempt to get public plaudits. It is a longitudinal commitment to supporting women through individual mentorship and sponsorship, and to work toward institutional and systems change.

Reliability also means taking an equitable approach to what Dr. Smith and Dr. Johnson call “office housework.” They define this as “administrative work that is necessary but undervalued, unlikely to lead to promotion, and disproportionately assigned to women.”¹⁰ In medicine, these tasks include organizing meetings, taking notes, planning social events, and remembering to celebrate colleagues’ achievements and milestones. Men should take on more of these tasks and advocate for change when the distribution of office housework in their workplace is inequitably directed toward women.
 

Integrity

Integrity involves honesty, professionalism, and benevolence. It is about making the morally correct choice even if there is potential risk. When men see gender inequity, they have an obligation to speak up. Whether it is overtly misogynistic behavior, subtle sexism, use of gendered language, inequitable distribution of office housework, lack of inclusivity and recognition for women, or another form of inequity, men must act with integrity and make it clear that they are partnering with women for change. Integrity means being an ally even when women are not present, and advocating that women be “at the table” for important conversations.

Beyond the individual

Allyship cannot end with individual actions; systems changes that build trustworthy institutions are necessary. Organizational leaders must approach gender conversations with humility to critically examine inequities and agency to implement meaningful changes. Workplace cultures and institutional policies should be reviewed with an eye toward system-level integrity and reliability for promoting and supporting women. Ongoing faculty and staff development programs must provide men with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (capability) to be strong allies. We have a long history of male-dominated institutions that are unfair or (worse) unsafe for women. Many systems are designed in a way that disadvantages women. These systems must be redesigned through an equity lens to start building trust with women in medicine.

Becoming trustworthy is a process

Even the best male allies have room to improve their trustworthiness. Many men (myself included) have a LOT of room to improve, but they should not get discouraged by the amount of ground to be gained. Steady, deliberate improvement in men’s humility, capability, agency, reliability, and integrity can build the foundation of trust with female colleagues. Trust takes time. It takes effort. It takes vulnerability. It is an ongoing, developmental process that requires deliberate practice, frequent reflection, and feedback from our female colleagues.

Dr. Kinnear is associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He is associate program director for the Med-Peds and Internal Medicine residency programs.

References

1. Ten Cate O. Nuts and bolts of entrustable professional activities. J Grad Med Educ. 2013 Mar;5(1):157-8. doi: 10.4300/JGME-D-12-00380.1.

2. Ten Cate O. Entrustment decisions: Bringing the patient into the assessment equation. Acad Med. 2017 Jun;92(6):736-8. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001623.

3. Kennedy TJT et al. Point-of-care assessment of medical trainee competence for independent clinical work. Acad Med. 2008 Oct;83(10 Suppl):S89-92. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e318183c8b7.

4. Choo KJ et al. How do supervising physicians decide to entrust residents with unsupervised tasks? A qualitative analysis. J Hosp Med. 2014 Mar;9(3):169-75. doi: 10.1002/jhm.2150.

5. Hauer KE et al. How clinical supervisors develop trust in their trainees: A qualitative study. Med Educ. 2015 Aug;49(8):783-95. doi: 10.1111/medu.12745.

6. Sterkenburg A et al. When do supervising physicians decide to entrust residents with unsupervised tasks? Acad Med. 2010 Sep;85(9):1408-17. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e3181eab0ec.

7. Sheu L et al. How supervisor experience influences trust, supervision, and trainee learning: A qualitative study. Acad Med. 2017 Sep;92(9):1320-7. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001560.

8. Pingree EW et al. Encouraging entrustment: A qualitative study of resident behaviors that promote entrustment. Acad Med. 2020 Nov;95(11):1718-25. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003487.

9. Ten Cate O, Chen HC. The ingredients of a rich entrustment decision. Med Teach. 2020 Dec;42(12):1413-20. doi: 10.1080/0142159X.2020.1817348.

10. Smith DG, Johnson WB. Good guys: How men can be better allies for women in the workplace: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation 2020.

11. Johnson WB, Smith D. Athena rising: How and why men should mentor women: Routledge 2016.

“If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy” – Stephen Covey

A few years ago, while working in my office, a female colleague stopped by for a casual chat. During the course of the conversation, she noticed that I did not have any diplomas or certificates hanging on my office walls. Instead, there were clusters of pictures drawn by my children, family photos, and a white board with my “to-do” list. The only wall art was a print of Banksy’s “The Thinker Monkey,” which depicts a monkey with its fist to its chin similar to Rodin’s famous sculpture, “Le Penseur.”

When asked why I didn’t hang any diplomas or awards, I replied that I preferred to keep my office atmosphere light and fun, and to focus on future goals rather than past accomplishments. I could see her jaw tense. Her frustration appeared deep, but it was for reasons beyond just my self-righteous tone. She said, “You know, I appreciate your focus on future goals, but it’s a pretty privileged position to not have to worry about sharing your accomplishments publicly.”

What followed was a discussion that was generative, enlightening, uncomfortable, and necessary. I had never considered what I chose to hang (or not hang) on my office walls as a privilege, and that was exactly the point. She described numerous episodes when her accomplishments were overlooked or (worse) attributed to a male colleague because she was a woman. I began to understand that graceful self-promotion is not optional for many women in medicine, it is a necessary skill.

This is just one example of how my privilege as a male in medicine contributed to my ignorance of the gender inequities that my female coworkers have faced throughout their careers. My colleague showed a lot of grace by taking the time to help me navigate my male privilege in a constructive manner. I decided to learn more about gender inequities, and eventually determined that I was woefully inadequate as a male ally, not by refusal but by ignorance. I wanted to start earning my colleague’s trust that I would be an ally that she could count on.
 

Trustworthiness

I wanted to be a trustworthy ally, but what does that entail? Perhaps we can learn from medical education. Trust is a complex construct that is increasingly used as a framework for assessing medical students and residents, such as with entrustable professional activities (EPAs).^1,2 Multiple studies have examined the characteristics that make a learner “trustworthy” when determining how much supervision is required.^3-8 Ten Cate and Chen performed an interpretivist, narrative review to synthesize the medical education literature on learner trustworthiness in the past 15 years,⁹ developing five major themes that contribute to trustworthiness: Humility, Capability, Agency, Reliability, and Integrity. Let’s examine each of these through the lens of male allyship.

Humility

Humility involves knowing one’s limits, asking for help, and being receptive to feedback.⁹ The first thing men need to do is to put their egos in check and recognize that women do not need rescuing; they need partnership. Systemic inequities have led to men holding the majority of leadership positions and significant sociopolitical capital, and correcting these inequities is more feasible when those in leadership and positions of power contribute. Women don’t need knights in shining armor, they need collaborative activism.

Humility also means a willingness to admit fallibility and to ask for help. Men often don’t know what they don’t know (see my foibles in the opening). As David G. Smith, PhD, and W. Brad Johnson, PhD, write in their book, “Good Guys,” “There are no perfect allies. As you work to become a better ally for the women around you, you will undoubtedly make a mistake.”¹⁰ Men must accept feedback on their shortcomings as allies without feeling as though they are losing their sociopolitical standing. Allyship for women does not mean there is a devaluing of men. We must escape a “zero-sum” mindset. Mistakes are where growth happens, but only if we approach our missteps with humility.
 

Capability

Capability entails having the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be a strong ally. Allyship is not intuitive for most men for several reasons. Many men do not experience the same biases or systemic inequities that women do, and therefore perceive them less frequently. I want to acknowledge that men can be victims of other systemic biases such as those against one’s race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or any number of factors. Men who face inequities for these other reasons may be more cognizant of the biases women face. Even so, allyship is a skill that few men have been explicitly taught. Even if taught, few standard or organized mechanisms for feedback on allyship capability exist. How, then, can men become capable allies?

Just like in medical education, men must become self-directed learners who seek to build capability and receive feedback on their performance as allies. Men should seek allyship training through local women-in-medicine programs or organizations, or through the increasing number of national education options such as the recent ADVANCE PHM Gender Equity Symposium. As with learning any skill, men should go to the literature, seeking knowledge from experts in the field. I recommend starting with “Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace¹⁰ or “Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women.”¹¹ Both books, by Dr. Smith and Dr. Johnson, are great entry points into the gender allyship literature. Seek out other resources from local experts on gender equity and allyship. Both aforementioned books were recommended to me by a friend and gender equity expert; without her guidance I would not have known where to start.
 

Agency

Agency involves being proactive and engaged rather than passive or apathetic. Men must be enthusiastic allies who seek out opportunities to mentor and sponsor women rather than waiting for others to ask. Agency requires being curious and passionate about improving. Most men in medicine are not openly and explicitly misogynistic or sexist, but many are only passive when it comes to gender equity and allyship. Trustworthy allyship entails turning passive support into active change. Not sure how to start? A good first step is to ask female colleagues questions such as, “What can I do to be a better ally for you in the workplace?” or “What are some things at work that are most challenging to you, but I might not notice because I’m a man?” Curiosity is the springboard toward agency.

Reliability

Reliability means being conscientious, accountable, and doing what we say we will do. Nothing undermines trustworthiness faster than making a commitment and not following through. Allyship cannot be a show or an attempt to get public plaudits. It is a longitudinal commitment to supporting women through individual mentorship and sponsorship, and to work toward institutional and systems change.

Reliability also means taking an equitable approach to what Dr. Smith and Dr. Johnson call “office housework.” They define this as “administrative work that is necessary but undervalued, unlikely to lead to promotion, and disproportionately assigned to women.”¹⁰ In medicine, these tasks include organizing meetings, taking notes, planning social events, and remembering to celebrate colleagues’ achievements and milestones. Men should take on more of these tasks and advocate for change when the distribution of office housework in their workplace is inequitably directed toward women.
 

Integrity

Integrity involves honesty, professionalism, and benevolence. It is about making the morally correct choice even if there is potential risk. When men see gender inequity, they have an obligation to speak up. Whether it is overtly misogynistic behavior, subtle sexism, use of gendered language, inequitable distribution of office housework, lack of inclusivity and recognition for women, or another form of inequity, men must act with integrity and make it clear that they are partnering with women for change. Integrity means being an ally even when women are not present, and advocating that women be “at the table” for important conversations.

Beyond the individual

Allyship cannot end with individual actions; systems changes that build trustworthy institutions are necessary. Organizational leaders must approach gender conversations with humility to critically examine inequities and agency to implement meaningful changes. Workplace cultures and institutional policies should be reviewed with an eye toward system-level integrity and reliability for promoting and supporting women. Ongoing faculty and staff development programs must provide men with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (capability) to be strong allies. We have a long history of male-dominated institutions that are unfair or (worse) unsafe for women. Many systems are designed in a way that disadvantages women. These systems must be redesigned through an equity lens to start building trust with women in medicine.

Becoming trustworthy is a process

Even the best male allies have room to improve their trustworthiness. Many men (myself included) have a LOT of room to improve, but they should not get discouraged by the amount of ground to be gained. Steady, deliberate improvement in men’s humility, capability, agency, reliability, and integrity can build the foundation of trust with female colleagues. Trust takes time. It takes effort. It takes vulnerability. It is an ongoing, developmental process that requires deliberate practice, frequent reflection, and feedback from our female colleagues.

Dr. Kinnear is associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He is associate program director for the Med-Peds and Internal Medicine residency programs.

References

1. Ten Cate O. Nuts and bolts of entrustable professional activities. J Grad Med Educ. 2013 Mar;5(1):157-8. doi: 10.4300/JGME-D-12-00380.1.

2. Ten Cate O. Entrustment decisions: Bringing the patient into the assessment equation. Acad Med. 2017 Jun;92(6):736-8. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001623.

3. Kennedy TJT et al. Point-of-care assessment of medical trainee competence for independent clinical work. Acad Med. 2008 Oct;83(10 Suppl):S89-92. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e318183c8b7.

4. Choo KJ et al. How do supervising physicians decide to entrust residents with unsupervised tasks? A qualitative analysis. J Hosp Med. 2014 Mar;9(3):169-75. doi: 10.1002/jhm.2150.

5. Hauer KE et al. How clinical supervisors develop trust in their trainees: A qualitative study. Med Educ. 2015 Aug;49(8):783-95. doi: 10.1111/medu.12745.

6. Sterkenburg A et al. When do supervising physicians decide to entrust residents with unsupervised tasks? Acad Med. 2010 Sep;85(9):1408-17. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e3181eab0ec.

7. Sheu L et al. How supervisor experience influences trust, supervision, and trainee learning: A qualitative study. Acad Med. 2017 Sep;92(9):1320-7. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001560.

8. Pingree EW et al. Encouraging entrustment: A qualitative study of resident behaviors that promote entrustment. Acad Med. 2020 Nov;95(11):1718-25. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003487.

9. Ten Cate O, Chen HC. The ingredients of a rich entrustment decision. Med Teach. 2020 Dec;42(12):1413-20. doi: 10.1080/0142159X.2020.1817348.

10. Smith DG, Johnson WB. Good guys: How men can be better allies for women in the workplace: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation 2020.

11. Johnson WB, Smith D. Athena rising: How and why men should mentor women: Routledge 2016.

“If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy” – Stephen Covey

A few years ago, while working in my office, a female colleague stopped by for a casual chat. During the course of the conversation, she noticed that I did not have any diplomas or certificates hanging on my office walls. Instead, there were clusters of pictures drawn by my children, family photos, and a white board with my “to-do” list. The only wall art was a print of Banksy’s “The Thinker Monkey,” which depicts a monkey with its fist to its chin similar to Rodin’s famous sculpture, “Le Penseur.”

When asked why I didn’t hang any diplomas or awards, I replied that I preferred to keep my office atmosphere light and fun, and to focus on future goals rather than past accomplishments. I could see her jaw tense. Her frustration appeared deep, but it was for reasons beyond just my self-righteous tone. She said, “You know, I appreciate your focus on future goals, but it’s a pretty privileged position to not have to worry about sharing your accomplishments publicly.”

What followed was a discussion that was generative, enlightening, uncomfortable, and necessary. I had never considered what I chose to hang (or not hang) on my office walls as a privilege, and that was exactly the point. She described numerous episodes when her accomplishments were overlooked or (worse) attributed to a male colleague because she was a woman. I began to understand that graceful self-promotion is not optional for many women in medicine, it is a necessary skill.

This is just one example of how my privilege as a male in medicine contributed to my ignorance of the gender inequities that my female coworkers have faced throughout their careers. My colleague showed a lot of grace by taking the time to help me navigate my male privilege in a constructive manner. I decided to learn more about gender inequities, and eventually determined that I was woefully inadequate as a male ally, not by refusal but by ignorance. I wanted to start earning my colleague’s trust that I would be an ally that she could count on.
 

Trustworthiness

I wanted to be a trustworthy ally, but what does that entail? Perhaps we can learn from medical education. Trust is a complex construct that is increasingly used as a framework for assessing medical students and residents, such as with entrustable professional activities (EPAs).^1,2 Multiple studies have examined the characteristics that make a learner “trustworthy” when determining how much supervision is required.^3-8 Ten Cate and Chen performed an interpretivist, narrative review to synthesize the medical education literature on learner trustworthiness in the past 15 years,⁹ developing five major themes that contribute to trustworthiness: Humility, Capability, Agency, Reliability, and Integrity. Let’s examine each of these through the lens of male allyship.

Humility

Humility involves knowing one’s limits, asking for help, and being receptive to feedback.⁹ The first thing men need to do is to put their egos in check and recognize that women do not need rescuing; they need partnership. Systemic inequities have led to men holding the majority of leadership positions and significant sociopolitical capital, and correcting these inequities is more feasible when those in leadership and positions of power contribute. Women don’t need knights in shining armor, they need collaborative activism.

Humility also means a willingness to admit fallibility and to ask for help. Men often don’t know what they don’t know (see my foibles in the opening). As David G. Smith, PhD, and W. Brad Johnson, PhD, write in their book, “Good Guys,” “There are no perfect allies. As you work to become a better ally for the women around you, you will undoubtedly make a mistake.”¹⁰ Men must accept feedback on their shortcomings as allies without feeling as though they are losing their sociopolitical standing. Allyship for women does not mean there is a devaluing of men. We must escape a “zero-sum” mindset. Mistakes are where growth happens, but only if we approach our missteps with humility.
 

Capability

Capability entails having the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to be a strong ally. Allyship is not intuitive for most men for several reasons. Many men do not experience the same biases or systemic inequities that women do, and therefore perceive them less frequently. I want to acknowledge that men can be victims of other systemic biases such as those against one’s race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, or any number of factors. Men who face inequities for these other reasons may be more cognizant of the biases women face. Even so, allyship is a skill that few men have been explicitly taught. Even if taught, few standard or organized mechanisms for feedback on allyship capability exist. How, then, can men become capable allies?

Just like in medical education, men must become self-directed learners who seek to build capability and receive feedback on their performance as allies. Men should seek allyship training through local women-in-medicine programs or organizations, or through the increasing number of national education options such as the recent ADVANCE PHM Gender Equity Symposium. As with learning any skill, men should go to the literature, seeking knowledge from experts in the field. I recommend starting with “Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace¹⁰ or “Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women.”¹¹ Both books, by Dr. Smith and Dr. Johnson, are great entry points into the gender allyship literature. Seek out other resources from local experts on gender equity and allyship. Both aforementioned books were recommended to me by a friend and gender equity expert; without her guidance I would not have known where to start.
 

Agency

Agency involves being proactive and engaged rather than passive or apathetic. Men must be enthusiastic allies who seek out opportunities to mentor and sponsor women rather than waiting for others to ask. Agency requires being curious and passionate about improving. Most men in medicine are not openly and explicitly misogynistic or sexist, but many are only passive when it comes to gender equity and allyship. Trustworthy allyship entails turning passive support into active change. Not sure how to start? A good first step is to ask female colleagues questions such as, “What can I do to be a better ally for you in the workplace?” or “What are some things at work that are most challenging to you, but I might not notice because I’m a man?” Curiosity is the springboard toward agency.

Reliability

Reliability means being conscientious, accountable, and doing what we say we will do. Nothing undermines trustworthiness faster than making a commitment and not following through. Allyship cannot be a show or an attempt to get public plaudits. It is a longitudinal commitment to supporting women through individual mentorship and sponsorship, and to work toward institutional and systems change.

Reliability also means taking an equitable approach to what Dr. Smith and Dr. Johnson call “office housework.” They define this as “administrative work that is necessary but undervalued, unlikely to lead to promotion, and disproportionately assigned to women.”¹⁰ In medicine, these tasks include organizing meetings, taking notes, planning social events, and remembering to celebrate colleagues’ achievements and milestones. Men should take on more of these tasks and advocate for change when the distribution of office housework in their workplace is inequitably directed toward women.
 

Integrity

Integrity involves honesty, professionalism, and benevolence. It is about making the morally correct choice even if there is potential risk. When men see gender inequity, they have an obligation to speak up. Whether it is overtly misogynistic behavior, subtle sexism, use of gendered language, inequitable distribution of office housework, lack of inclusivity and recognition for women, or another form of inequity, men must act with integrity and make it clear that they are partnering with women for change. Integrity means being an ally even when women are not present, and advocating that women be “at the table” for important conversations.

Beyond the individual

Allyship cannot end with individual actions; systems changes that build trustworthy institutions are necessary. Organizational leaders must approach gender conversations with humility to critically examine inequities and agency to implement meaningful changes. Workplace cultures and institutional policies should be reviewed with an eye toward system-level integrity and reliability for promoting and supporting women. Ongoing faculty and staff development programs must provide men with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (capability) to be strong allies. We have a long history of male-dominated institutions that are unfair or (worse) unsafe for women. Many systems are designed in a way that disadvantages women. These systems must be redesigned through an equity lens to start building trust with women in medicine.

Becoming trustworthy is a process

Even the best male allies have room to improve their trustworthiness. Many men (myself included) have a LOT of room to improve, but they should not get discouraged by the amount of ground to be gained. Steady, deliberate improvement in men’s humility, capability, agency, reliability, and integrity can build the foundation of trust with female colleagues. Trust takes time. It takes effort. It takes vulnerability. It is an ongoing, developmental process that requires deliberate practice, frequent reflection, and feedback from our female colleagues.

Dr. Kinnear is associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics in the Division of Hospital Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He is associate program director for the Med-Peds and Internal Medicine residency programs.

References

1. Ten Cate O. Nuts and bolts of entrustable professional activities. J Grad Med Educ. 2013 Mar;5(1):157-8. doi: 10.4300/JGME-D-12-00380.1.

2. Ten Cate O. Entrustment decisions: Bringing the patient into the assessment equation. Acad Med. 2017 Jun;92(6):736-8. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001623.

3. Kennedy TJT et al. Point-of-care assessment of medical trainee competence for independent clinical work. Acad Med. 2008 Oct;83(10 Suppl):S89-92. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e318183c8b7.

4. Choo KJ et al. How do supervising physicians decide to entrust residents with unsupervised tasks? A qualitative analysis. J Hosp Med. 2014 Mar;9(3):169-75. doi: 10.1002/jhm.2150.

5. Hauer KE et al. How clinical supervisors develop trust in their trainees: A qualitative study. Med Educ. 2015 Aug;49(8):783-95. doi: 10.1111/medu.12745.

6. Sterkenburg A et al. When do supervising physicians decide to entrust residents with unsupervised tasks? Acad Med. 2010 Sep;85(9):1408-17. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0b013e3181eab0ec.

7. Sheu L et al. How supervisor experience influences trust, supervision, and trainee learning: A qualitative study. Acad Med. 2017 Sep;92(9):1320-7. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000001560.

8. Pingree EW et al. Encouraging entrustment: A qualitative study of resident behaviors that promote entrustment. Acad Med. 2020 Nov;95(11):1718-25. doi: 10.1097/ACM.0000000000003487.

9. Ten Cate O, Chen HC. The ingredients of a rich entrustment decision. Med Teach. 2020 Dec;42(12):1413-20. doi: 10.1080/0142159X.2020.1817348.

10. Smith DG, Johnson WB. Good guys: How men can be better allies for women in the workplace: Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation 2020.

11. Johnson WB, Smith D. Athena rising: How and why men should mentor women: Routledge 2016.

In 2018, Atashi Mandal, MD, a hospitalist residing in Orange County, Calif., was recruited along with several other doctors to fill hospitalist positions in rural Bishop, Calif. She has since driven 600 miles round trip every month for a week of hospital medicine shifts at Northern Inyo Hospital.

Dr. Mandal said she has really enjoyed her time at the small rural hospital and found it professionally fulfilling to participate so fully in the health of its local community. She was building personal bonds and calling the experience the pinnacle of her career when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across America and the world, even reaching up into Bishop, population 3,760, in the isolated Owens Valley.

The 25-bed hospital has seen at least 100 COVID patients in the past year and some months. Responsibility for taking care of these patients has been both humbling and gratifying, Dr. Mandal said. The facility’s hospitalists made a commitment to keep working through the pandemic. “We were able to come together (around COVID) as a team and our teamwork really made a difference,” she said.

“One of the advantages in a smaller hospital is you can have greater cohesiveness and your communication can be tighter. That played a big role in how we were able to accomplish so much with fewer resources as a rural hospital.” But staffing shortages, recruitment, and retention remain a perennial challenge for rural hospitals. “And COVID only exacerbated the problems,” she said. “I’ve had my challenges trying to make proper treatment plans without access to specialists.”

It was also difficult to witness so many patients severely ill or dying from COVID, Dr. Mandal said, especially since patients were not allowed family visitors – even though that was for a good reason, to minimize the virus’s spread.

HM in rural communities

Hospital medicine continues to extend into rural communities and small rural hospitals. In 2018, 35.7% of all rural counties in America had hospitals staffed with hospitalists, and 63.3% of rural hospitals had hospitalist programs (compared with 79.2% of urban hospitals). These numbers come from Medicare resources files from the Department of Health & Human Services, analyzed by Peiyin Hung, PhD, assistant professor of health services management and policy at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.¹ Hospitalist penetration rates rose steadily from 2011 to 2017, with a slight dip in 2018, Dr. Hung said in an interview.

A total of 138 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research in Chapel Hill, N.C. Nineteen rural hospitals closed in 2020 alone, although many of those were caused by factors predating the pandemic. Only one has closed so far in 2021. But financial pressures, including low patient volumes and loss of revenue from canceled routine services like elective surgeries during the pandemic, have added to hospitals’ difficulties. Pandemic relief funding may have helped some hospitals stay open, but that support eventually will go away.

Experts emphasize the diversity of rural America and its health care systems. Rural economies are volatile and more diverse than is often appreciated. The hospital may be a cornerstone of the local economy; when one closes, it can devastate the community. Workforce is one of the chief components of a hospital’s ability to meet its strategic vision, and hospitalists are a big part in that. But while hospitalists are valued and appreciated, if the hospital is suffering severe financial problems, that will impact its doctors’ jobs and livelihoods.

“Bandwidth” varies widely for rural hospitalists and their hospitalist groups, said Ken Simone, DO, SFHM, executive chair of SHM’s Rural Special Interest Group and founder and principal of KGS Consultants, a Hospital Medicine and Primary Care Practice Management Consulting company. They may face scarce resources, scarce clinical staffing, lack of support staff to help operations run smoothly, lack of access to specialists locally, and lack of technology. While practicing in a rural setting presents various challenges, it can be rewarding for those clinicians who embrace its autonomy and broad scope of services, Dr. Simone said.

SHM’s Rural SIG focuses on the unique needs of rural hospitalists, providing them with an opportunity to share their concerns, challenges and solutions through roundtable discussions every other month and a special interest forum held in conjunction with the SHM Converge annual conference, Dr. Simone said. (The next SHM Converge will be April 7-10, 2022, in Nashville, Tenn.) The Rural SIG also collaborates with other hospital medicine SIGs and committees and is working on a white paper, “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Rural Hospital Medicine Group.” It is also looking to develop a rural mentorship exchange program.

COVID reaches rural America

Early COVID caseloads tended to be in urban areas, but subsequent surges of infections have spread to many rural areas. Some rural settings became epicenters for the pandemic in November and December 2020. More recent troubling rises in COVID cases, particularly in areas with lower vaccination rates – suggest that the challenges of the pandemic are still not behind us.

“By no means is the crisis done in rural America,” said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, in a Virtual Rural Health Journalism workshop on rural health care sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists.²

Mr. Morgan’s colleague, Brock Slabach, NRHA’s chief operations officer, said in an interview that, while 453 of the 1,800 hospitals in rural areas fit NRHA’s criteria as being vulnerable to closure, the rest are not, and are fulfilling their missions for their communities. Hospitalists are becoming more common in these hospitals, he said, and rural hospitalists can be an important asset in attracting primary care physicians – who might not appreciate being perpetually on call for their hospitalized patients – to rural communities.

In many cases, traveling doctors like Dr. Mandal or telemedicine backup, particularly for after-hours coverage or ICU beds, are important pieces of the puzzle for smaller hospitals. There are different ways to use the spectrum of telemedicine services to interact with a hospital’s daytime and night routines. In some isolated locations, nurse practitioners or physician assistants provide on-the-ground coverage with virtual backup. Rural hospitals often affiliate with telemedicine networks within health systems – or else contract with independent specialized providers of telemedicine consultation.

Mr. Slabach said another alternative for staffing hospitals with smaller ED and inpatient volumes is to have one doctor on duty who can cover both departments simultaneously. Meanwhile, the new federal Rural Emergency Hospital Program proposes to allow rural hospitals to become essentially freestanding EDs – starting Jan. 1, 2023 – that can manage patients for a maximum of 24 hours.³

Community connections and proactive staffing

Lisa Kaufmann, MD, works as a hospitalist for a two-hospital system in North Carolina, Appalachian Regional Health Care. She practices at Watauga Medical Center, with 100 licensed beds in Boone, and at Cannon Memorial Hospital, a critical access hospital in unincorporated Linville. “We are proud of what we have been able to accomplish during the pandemic,” she said.

A former critical care unit at Watauga had been shut down, but its wiring remained intact. “We turned it into a COVID unit in three days. Then we opened another COVID unit with 18 beds, but that still wasn’t enough. We converted half of our med/surg capacity into a COVID unit. At one point almost half of all of our acute beds were for COVID patients. We made plans for what we would do if it got worse, since we had almost run out of beds,” she said. Demand peaked at the end of January 2021.

“The biggest barrier for us was if someone needed to be transferred, for example, if they needed ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation], and we couldn’t find another hospital to provide that technology.” In ARHC’s mountainous region – known as the “High Country” – weather can also make it difficult to transport patients. “Sometimes the ambulance can’t make it off the mountain, and half of the time the medical helicopter can’t fly. So we have to be prepared to keep people who we might think ought to be transferred,” she said.

Like many rural communities, the High Country is tightly knit, and its hospitals are really connected to their communities, Dr. Kaufmann said. The health system already had a lot of community connections beyond acute care, and that meant the pandemic wasn’t experienced as severely as it was in some other rural communities. “But without hospitalists in our hospitals, it would have been much more difficult.”

Proactive supply fulfillment meant that her hospitals never ran out of personal protective equipment. “Staffing was a challenge, but we were proactive in getting traveling doctors to come here. We also utilized extra doctors from the local community,” she said. Another key was well-established disaster planning, with regular drills, and a robust incident command structure, which just needed to be activated in the crisis. “Small hospitals need to be prepared for disaster,” Dr. Kaufmann said.

For Dale Wiersma, MD, a hospitalist with Spectrum Health, a 14-hospital system in western Michigan, telemedicine services are coordinated across 8 rural regional hospitals. “We don’t tend to use it for direct hospitalist work during daytime hours, unless a facility is swamped, in which case we can cross-cover. We do more telemedicine at night. But during daytime hours we have access to stroke neurology, cardiology, psychiatry, critical care and infectious disease specialists who are able to offer virtual consults,” Dr. Wiersma said. A virtual critical care team of doctor and nurse is often the only intensivist service covering Spectrum’s rural hospitals.

“In our system, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of telemedicine,” Dr. Wiersma said. “We had been working on the tele-ICU program, trying to get it rolled out. When the pandemic hit, we launched it in just 6 weeks.”

There have been several COVID surges in Michigan, he said. “We were stretched pretty close to our limit several times, but never to the breaking point. For our physicians, it was the protracted nature of the pandemic that was fatiguing for everyone involved. Our system worked hard to staff up as well as it could, to make sure our people didn’t go over the edge.” It was also hard for hospitals that typically might see one or two deaths in a month to suddenly have five in a week.

Another Spectrum hospitalist, Christopher Skinner, MD, works at two rural Michigan hospitals 15 minutes apart in Big Rapids and Reed City. “I prefer working in rural areas. I’ve never had an ambition to be a top dog. I like the style of practice where you don’t have all of the medical subspecialties on site. It frees you up to use all your skills,” Dr. Skinner said.

But that approach was put to the test by the pandemic, since it was harder to transfer those patients who normally would not have stayed at these rural hospitals. “We had to make do,” he said, although virtual backup and second opinions from Spectrum’s virtual critical care team helped.

“It was a great collaboration, which helped us to handle critical care cases that we hadn’t had to manage pre-COVID. We’ve gotten used to it, with the backup, so I expect we’ll still be taking care of these kind of sick ventilator patients even after the pandemic ends,” Dr. Skinner said. “We’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

Sukhbir Pannu, MD, a hospitalist in Denver and CEO and founder of Rural Physicians Group, said the pandemic was highly impactful, operationally and logistically, for his firm, which contracts with 54 hospitals to provide their hospitalist staffing. “There was no preparation. Everything had to be done on the fly. Initially, it was felt that rural areas weren’t at as great a risk for COVID, but that proved not to be true. Many experienced a sudden increase in very sick patients. We set up a task force to manage daily census in all of our contracted facilities.”

How did Rural Physicians Group manage through the crisis? “The short answer is telemedicine,” he said. “We had physicians on the ground in these hospitals. But we needed intensivists at the other end of the line to support them.” A lot of conversations about telemedicine were already going on in the company, but the pandemic provided the impetus to launch its network, which has grown to include rheumatologists, pulmonologists, cardiologists, infection medicine, neurology, and psychiatry, all reachable through a central command structure.

Telemedicine is not a cure-all, Dr. Pannu said. It doesn’t work in a vacuum. It requires both a provider on the ground and specialists available remotely. “But it can be a massive multiplier.”

Critical medicine

Other hospitals, including small and rural ones, have reported taking on the challenge of covering critical care with nonintensivist physicians because the pandemic demanded it. David Aymond, MD, a hospitalist at 60-bed Byrd Regional Hospital in Leesville, La., population 6,612, has advocated for years for expanded training and credentialing opportunities in intensive care medicine beyond the traditional path of becoming a board-certified intensivist. Some rural hospitalists were already experienced in providing critical care for ICU patients even before the pandemic hit.

“What COVID did was to highlight the problem that there aren’t enough intensivists in this country, particular for smaller hospitals,” Dr. Aymond said. Some hospitalists who stepped into crisis roles in ICUs during COVID surges showed that they could take care of COVID patients very well.

Dr. Aymond, who is a fellowship-trained hospitalist with primary training in family medicine, has used his ICU experience in both fellowship and practice to make a thorough study of critical care medicine, which he put to good use when the seven-bed ICU at Byrd Memorial filled with COVID patients. “Early on, we were managing multiple ventilators throughout the hospital,” he said. “But we were having good outcomes. Our COVID patients were surviving.” That led to Dr. Aymond being interviewed by local news media, which led to other patients across the state asking to be transferred to “the COVID specialist who practices at Byrd.”

Dr. Aymond would like to see opportunities for abbreviated 1-year critical care fellowships for hospitalists who have amassed enough ICU experience in practice or in residency, and to make room for family medicine physicians in such programs. He is also working through SHM with the Society of Critical Care Medicine to generate educational ICU content. SHM now has a critical care lecture series at: www.hospitalmedicine.org/clinical-topics/critical-care/.

Dr. Mandal, who also works as a pediatric hospitalist, said that experience gave her more familiarity with using noninvasive methods for delivering respiratory therapies like high-flow oxygen. “When I saw a COVID patient who had hypoxia but was still able to talk, I didn’t hesitate to deliver oxygen through noninvasive means.” Eventually hospital practice generally for COVID caught up with this approach.

But she ran into personal difficulties because N95 face masks didn’t fit her face. Instead, she had to wear a portable respirator, which made it hard to hear what her patients were saying. “I formulated a lot of workarounds, such as interviewing the patient over the phone before going into the room for the physical exam.”

Throughout the pandemic, she never wavered in her commitment to rural hospital medicine and its opportunities for working in a small and wonderful community, where she could practice at the top of her license, with a degree of autonomy not granted in other settings. For doctors who want that kind of practice, she said, “the rewards will be paid back in spades. That’s been my experience.”

For more information on SHM’s Rural SIG and its supports for rural hospitalists, contact its executive chair, Kenneth Simone, DO, at ksimone911@gmail.com.
 

References

1. Personal communication from Peiyin Hung, June 2021.

2. Association of Health Care Journalists. Rural Health Journalism Workshop 2021. June 21, 2021. https://healthjournalism.org/calendar-details.php?id=2369.

3. Congress Establishes New Medicare Provider Category and Reimbursement for Rural Emergency Hospitals. National Law Review. Jan. 5, 2021. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/congress-establishes-new-medicare-provider-category-and-reimbursement-rural.

In 2018, Atashi Mandal, MD, a hospitalist residing in Orange County, Calif., was recruited along with several other doctors to fill hospitalist positions in rural Bishop, Calif. She has since driven 600 miles round trip every month for a week of hospital medicine shifts at Northern Inyo Hospital.

Dr. Mandal said she has really enjoyed her time at the small rural hospital and found it professionally fulfilling to participate so fully in the health of its local community. She was building personal bonds and calling the experience the pinnacle of her career when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across America and the world, even reaching up into Bishop, population 3,760, in the isolated Owens Valley.

The 25-bed hospital has seen at least 100 COVID patients in the past year and some months. Responsibility for taking care of these patients has been both humbling and gratifying, Dr. Mandal said. The facility’s hospitalists made a commitment to keep working through the pandemic. “We were able to come together (around COVID) as a team and our teamwork really made a difference,” she said.

“One of the advantages in a smaller hospital is you can have greater cohesiveness and your communication can be tighter. That played a big role in how we were able to accomplish so much with fewer resources as a rural hospital.” But staffing shortages, recruitment, and retention remain a perennial challenge for rural hospitals. “And COVID only exacerbated the problems,” she said. “I’ve had my challenges trying to make proper treatment plans without access to specialists.”

It was also difficult to witness so many patients severely ill or dying from COVID, Dr. Mandal said, especially since patients were not allowed family visitors – even though that was for a good reason, to minimize the virus’s spread.

HM in rural communities

Hospital medicine continues to extend into rural communities and small rural hospitals. In 2018, 35.7% of all rural counties in America had hospitals staffed with hospitalists, and 63.3% of rural hospitals had hospitalist programs (compared with 79.2% of urban hospitals). These numbers come from Medicare resources files from the Department of Health & Human Services, analyzed by Peiyin Hung, PhD, assistant professor of health services management and policy at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.¹ Hospitalist penetration rates rose steadily from 2011 to 2017, with a slight dip in 2018, Dr. Hung said in an interview.

A total of 138 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research in Chapel Hill, N.C. Nineteen rural hospitals closed in 2020 alone, although many of those were caused by factors predating the pandemic. Only one has closed so far in 2021. But financial pressures, including low patient volumes and loss of revenue from canceled routine services like elective surgeries during the pandemic, have added to hospitals’ difficulties. Pandemic relief funding may have helped some hospitals stay open, but that support eventually will go away.

Experts emphasize the diversity of rural America and its health care systems. Rural economies are volatile and more diverse than is often appreciated. The hospital may be a cornerstone of the local economy; when one closes, it can devastate the community. Workforce is one of the chief components of a hospital’s ability to meet its strategic vision, and hospitalists are a big part in that. But while hospitalists are valued and appreciated, if the hospital is suffering severe financial problems, that will impact its doctors’ jobs and livelihoods.

“Bandwidth” varies widely for rural hospitalists and their hospitalist groups, said Ken Simone, DO, SFHM, executive chair of SHM’s Rural Special Interest Group and founder and principal of KGS Consultants, a Hospital Medicine and Primary Care Practice Management Consulting company. They may face scarce resources, scarce clinical staffing, lack of support staff to help operations run smoothly, lack of access to specialists locally, and lack of technology. While practicing in a rural setting presents various challenges, it can be rewarding for those clinicians who embrace its autonomy and broad scope of services, Dr. Simone said.

SHM’s Rural SIG focuses on the unique needs of rural hospitalists, providing them with an opportunity to share their concerns, challenges and solutions through roundtable discussions every other month and a special interest forum held in conjunction with the SHM Converge annual conference, Dr. Simone said. (The next SHM Converge will be April 7-10, 2022, in Nashville, Tenn.) The Rural SIG also collaborates with other hospital medicine SIGs and committees and is working on a white paper, “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Rural Hospital Medicine Group.” It is also looking to develop a rural mentorship exchange program.

COVID reaches rural America

Early COVID caseloads tended to be in urban areas, but subsequent surges of infections have spread to many rural areas. Some rural settings became epicenters for the pandemic in November and December 2020. More recent troubling rises in COVID cases, particularly in areas with lower vaccination rates – suggest that the challenges of the pandemic are still not behind us.

“By no means is the crisis done in rural America,” said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, in a Virtual Rural Health Journalism workshop on rural health care sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists.²

Mr. Morgan’s colleague, Brock Slabach, NRHA’s chief operations officer, said in an interview that, while 453 of the 1,800 hospitals in rural areas fit NRHA’s criteria as being vulnerable to closure, the rest are not, and are fulfilling their missions for their communities. Hospitalists are becoming more common in these hospitals, he said, and rural hospitalists can be an important asset in attracting primary care physicians – who might not appreciate being perpetually on call for their hospitalized patients – to rural communities.

In many cases, traveling doctors like Dr. Mandal or telemedicine backup, particularly for after-hours coverage or ICU beds, are important pieces of the puzzle for smaller hospitals. There are different ways to use the spectrum of telemedicine services to interact with a hospital’s daytime and night routines. In some isolated locations, nurse practitioners or physician assistants provide on-the-ground coverage with virtual backup. Rural hospitals often affiliate with telemedicine networks within health systems – or else contract with independent specialized providers of telemedicine consultation.

Mr. Slabach said another alternative for staffing hospitals with smaller ED and inpatient volumes is to have one doctor on duty who can cover both departments simultaneously. Meanwhile, the new federal Rural Emergency Hospital Program proposes to allow rural hospitals to become essentially freestanding EDs – starting Jan. 1, 2023 – that can manage patients for a maximum of 24 hours.³

Community connections and proactive staffing

Lisa Kaufmann, MD, works as a hospitalist for a two-hospital system in North Carolina, Appalachian Regional Health Care. She practices at Watauga Medical Center, with 100 licensed beds in Boone, and at Cannon Memorial Hospital, a critical access hospital in unincorporated Linville. “We are proud of what we have been able to accomplish during the pandemic,” she said.

A former critical care unit at Watauga had been shut down, but its wiring remained intact. “We turned it into a COVID unit in three days. Then we opened another COVID unit with 18 beds, but that still wasn’t enough. We converted half of our med/surg capacity into a COVID unit. At one point almost half of all of our acute beds were for COVID patients. We made plans for what we would do if it got worse, since we had almost run out of beds,” she said. Demand peaked at the end of January 2021.

“The biggest barrier for us was if someone needed to be transferred, for example, if they needed ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation], and we couldn’t find another hospital to provide that technology.” In ARHC’s mountainous region – known as the “High Country” – weather can also make it difficult to transport patients. “Sometimes the ambulance can’t make it off the mountain, and half of the time the medical helicopter can’t fly. So we have to be prepared to keep people who we might think ought to be transferred,” she said.

Like many rural communities, the High Country is tightly knit, and its hospitals are really connected to their communities, Dr. Kaufmann said. The health system already had a lot of community connections beyond acute care, and that meant the pandemic wasn’t experienced as severely as it was in some other rural communities. “But without hospitalists in our hospitals, it would have been much more difficult.”

Proactive supply fulfillment meant that her hospitals never ran out of personal protective equipment. “Staffing was a challenge, but we were proactive in getting traveling doctors to come here. We also utilized extra doctors from the local community,” she said. Another key was well-established disaster planning, with regular drills, and a robust incident command structure, which just needed to be activated in the crisis. “Small hospitals need to be prepared for disaster,” Dr. Kaufmann said.

For Dale Wiersma, MD, a hospitalist with Spectrum Health, a 14-hospital system in western Michigan, telemedicine services are coordinated across 8 rural regional hospitals. “We don’t tend to use it for direct hospitalist work during daytime hours, unless a facility is swamped, in which case we can cross-cover. We do more telemedicine at night. But during daytime hours we have access to stroke neurology, cardiology, psychiatry, critical care and infectious disease specialists who are able to offer virtual consults,” Dr. Wiersma said. A virtual critical care team of doctor and nurse is often the only intensivist service covering Spectrum’s rural hospitals.

“In our system, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of telemedicine,” Dr. Wiersma said. “We had been working on the tele-ICU program, trying to get it rolled out. When the pandemic hit, we launched it in just 6 weeks.”

There have been several COVID surges in Michigan, he said. “We were stretched pretty close to our limit several times, but never to the breaking point. For our physicians, it was the protracted nature of the pandemic that was fatiguing for everyone involved. Our system worked hard to staff up as well as it could, to make sure our people didn’t go over the edge.” It was also hard for hospitals that typically might see one or two deaths in a month to suddenly have five in a week.

Another Spectrum hospitalist, Christopher Skinner, MD, works at two rural Michigan hospitals 15 minutes apart in Big Rapids and Reed City. “I prefer working in rural areas. I’ve never had an ambition to be a top dog. I like the style of practice where you don’t have all of the medical subspecialties on site. It frees you up to use all your skills,” Dr. Skinner said.

But that approach was put to the test by the pandemic, since it was harder to transfer those patients who normally would not have stayed at these rural hospitals. “We had to make do,” he said, although virtual backup and second opinions from Spectrum’s virtual critical care team helped.

“It was a great collaboration, which helped us to handle critical care cases that we hadn’t had to manage pre-COVID. We’ve gotten used to it, with the backup, so I expect we’ll still be taking care of these kind of sick ventilator patients even after the pandemic ends,” Dr. Skinner said. “We’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

Sukhbir Pannu, MD, a hospitalist in Denver and CEO and founder of Rural Physicians Group, said the pandemic was highly impactful, operationally and logistically, for his firm, which contracts with 54 hospitals to provide their hospitalist staffing. “There was no preparation. Everything had to be done on the fly. Initially, it was felt that rural areas weren’t at as great a risk for COVID, but that proved not to be true. Many experienced a sudden increase in very sick patients. We set up a task force to manage daily census in all of our contracted facilities.”

How did Rural Physicians Group manage through the crisis? “The short answer is telemedicine,” he said. “We had physicians on the ground in these hospitals. But we needed intensivists at the other end of the line to support them.” A lot of conversations about telemedicine were already going on in the company, but the pandemic provided the impetus to launch its network, which has grown to include rheumatologists, pulmonologists, cardiologists, infection medicine, neurology, and psychiatry, all reachable through a central command structure.

Telemedicine is not a cure-all, Dr. Pannu said. It doesn’t work in a vacuum. It requires both a provider on the ground and specialists available remotely. “But it can be a massive multiplier.”

Critical medicine

Other hospitals, including small and rural ones, have reported taking on the challenge of covering critical care with nonintensivist physicians because the pandemic demanded it. David Aymond, MD, a hospitalist at 60-bed Byrd Regional Hospital in Leesville, La., population 6,612, has advocated for years for expanded training and credentialing opportunities in intensive care medicine beyond the traditional path of becoming a board-certified intensivist. Some rural hospitalists were already experienced in providing critical care for ICU patients even before the pandemic hit.

“What COVID did was to highlight the problem that there aren’t enough intensivists in this country, particular for smaller hospitals,” Dr. Aymond said. Some hospitalists who stepped into crisis roles in ICUs during COVID surges showed that they could take care of COVID patients very well.

Dr. Aymond, who is a fellowship-trained hospitalist with primary training in family medicine, has used his ICU experience in both fellowship and practice to make a thorough study of critical care medicine, which he put to good use when the seven-bed ICU at Byrd Memorial filled with COVID patients. “Early on, we were managing multiple ventilators throughout the hospital,” he said. “But we were having good outcomes. Our COVID patients were surviving.” That led to Dr. Aymond being interviewed by local news media, which led to other patients across the state asking to be transferred to “the COVID specialist who practices at Byrd.”

Dr. Aymond would like to see opportunities for abbreviated 1-year critical care fellowships for hospitalists who have amassed enough ICU experience in practice or in residency, and to make room for family medicine physicians in such programs. He is also working through SHM with the Society of Critical Care Medicine to generate educational ICU content. SHM now has a critical care lecture series at: www.hospitalmedicine.org/clinical-topics/critical-care/.

Dr. Mandal, who also works as a pediatric hospitalist, said that experience gave her more familiarity with using noninvasive methods for delivering respiratory therapies like high-flow oxygen. “When I saw a COVID patient who had hypoxia but was still able to talk, I didn’t hesitate to deliver oxygen through noninvasive means.” Eventually hospital practice generally for COVID caught up with this approach.

But she ran into personal difficulties because N95 face masks didn’t fit her face. Instead, she had to wear a portable respirator, which made it hard to hear what her patients were saying. “I formulated a lot of workarounds, such as interviewing the patient over the phone before going into the room for the physical exam.”

Throughout the pandemic, she never wavered in her commitment to rural hospital medicine and its opportunities for working in a small and wonderful community, where she could practice at the top of her license, with a degree of autonomy not granted in other settings. For doctors who want that kind of practice, she said, “the rewards will be paid back in spades. That’s been my experience.”

For more information on SHM’s Rural SIG and its supports for rural hospitalists, contact its executive chair, Kenneth Simone, DO, at ksimone911@gmail.com.
 

References

1. Personal communication from Peiyin Hung, June 2021.

2. Association of Health Care Journalists. Rural Health Journalism Workshop 2021. June 21, 2021. https://healthjournalism.org/calendar-details.php?id=2369.

3. Congress Establishes New Medicare Provider Category and Reimbursement for Rural Emergency Hospitals. National Law Review. Jan. 5, 2021. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/congress-establishes-new-medicare-provider-category-and-reimbursement-rural.

In 2018, Atashi Mandal, MD, a hospitalist residing in Orange County, Calif., was recruited along with several other doctors to fill hospitalist positions in rural Bishop, Calif. She has since driven 600 miles round trip every month for a week of hospital medicine shifts at Northern Inyo Hospital.

Dr. Mandal said she has really enjoyed her time at the small rural hospital and found it professionally fulfilling to participate so fully in the health of its local community. She was building personal bonds and calling the experience the pinnacle of her career when the COVID-19 pandemic swept across America and the world, even reaching up into Bishop, population 3,760, in the isolated Owens Valley.

The 25-bed hospital has seen at least 100 COVID patients in the past year and some months. Responsibility for taking care of these patients has been both humbling and gratifying, Dr. Mandal said. The facility’s hospitalists made a commitment to keep working through the pandemic. “We were able to come together (around COVID) as a team and our teamwork really made a difference,” she said.

“One of the advantages in a smaller hospital is you can have greater cohesiveness and your communication can be tighter. That played a big role in how we were able to accomplish so much with fewer resources as a rural hospital.” But staffing shortages, recruitment, and retention remain a perennial challenge for rural hospitals. “And COVID only exacerbated the problems,” she said. “I’ve had my challenges trying to make proper treatment plans without access to specialists.”

It was also difficult to witness so many patients severely ill or dying from COVID, Dr. Mandal said, especially since patients were not allowed family visitors – even though that was for a good reason, to minimize the virus’s spread.

HM in rural communities

Hospital medicine continues to extend into rural communities and small rural hospitals. In 2018, 35.7% of all rural counties in America had hospitals staffed with hospitalists, and 63.3% of rural hospitals had hospitalist programs (compared with 79.2% of urban hospitals). These numbers come from Medicare resources files from the Department of Health & Human Services, analyzed by Peiyin Hung, PhD, assistant professor of health services management and policy at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.¹ Hospitalist penetration rates rose steadily from 2011 to 2017, with a slight dip in 2018, Dr. Hung said in an interview.

A total of 138 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, according to the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research in Chapel Hill, N.C. Nineteen rural hospitals closed in 2020 alone, although many of those were caused by factors predating the pandemic. Only one has closed so far in 2021. But financial pressures, including low patient volumes and loss of revenue from canceled routine services like elective surgeries during the pandemic, have added to hospitals’ difficulties. Pandemic relief funding may have helped some hospitals stay open, but that support eventually will go away.

Experts emphasize the diversity of rural America and its health care systems. Rural economies are volatile and more diverse than is often appreciated. The hospital may be a cornerstone of the local economy; when one closes, it can devastate the community. Workforce is one of the chief components of a hospital’s ability to meet its strategic vision, and hospitalists are a big part in that. But while hospitalists are valued and appreciated, if the hospital is suffering severe financial problems, that will impact its doctors’ jobs and livelihoods.

“Bandwidth” varies widely for rural hospitalists and their hospitalist groups, said Ken Simone, DO, SFHM, executive chair of SHM’s Rural Special Interest Group and founder and principal of KGS Consultants, a Hospital Medicine and Primary Care Practice Management Consulting company. They may face scarce resources, scarce clinical staffing, lack of support staff to help operations run smoothly, lack of access to specialists locally, and lack of technology. While practicing in a rural setting presents various challenges, it can be rewarding for those clinicians who embrace its autonomy and broad scope of services, Dr. Simone said.

SHM’s Rural SIG focuses on the unique needs of rural hospitalists, providing them with an opportunity to share their concerns, challenges and solutions through roundtable discussions every other month and a special interest forum held in conjunction with the SHM Converge annual conference, Dr. Simone said. (The next SHM Converge will be April 7-10, 2022, in Nashville, Tenn.) The Rural SIG also collaborates with other hospital medicine SIGs and committees and is working on a white paper, “Key Principles and Characteristics of an Effective Rural Hospital Medicine Group.” It is also looking to develop a rural mentorship exchange program.

COVID reaches rural America

Early COVID caseloads tended to be in urban areas, but subsequent surges of infections have spread to many rural areas. Some rural settings became epicenters for the pandemic in November and December 2020. More recent troubling rises in COVID cases, particularly in areas with lower vaccination rates – suggest that the challenges of the pandemic are still not behind us.

“By no means is the crisis done in rural America,” said Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, in a Virtual Rural Health Journalism workshop on rural health care sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists.²

Mr. Morgan’s colleague, Brock Slabach, NRHA’s chief operations officer, said in an interview that, while 453 of the 1,800 hospitals in rural areas fit NRHA’s criteria as being vulnerable to closure, the rest are not, and are fulfilling their missions for their communities. Hospitalists are becoming more common in these hospitals, he said, and rural hospitalists can be an important asset in attracting primary care physicians – who might not appreciate being perpetually on call for their hospitalized patients – to rural communities.

In many cases, traveling doctors like Dr. Mandal or telemedicine backup, particularly for after-hours coverage or ICU beds, are important pieces of the puzzle for smaller hospitals. There are different ways to use the spectrum of telemedicine services to interact with a hospital’s daytime and night routines. In some isolated locations, nurse practitioners or physician assistants provide on-the-ground coverage with virtual backup. Rural hospitals often affiliate with telemedicine networks within health systems – or else contract with independent specialized providers of telemedicine consultation.

Mr. Slabach said another alternative for staffing hospitals with smaller ED and inpatient volumes is to have one doctor on duty who can cover both departments simultaneously. Meanwhile, the new federal Rural Emergency Hospital Program proposes to allow rural hospitals to become essentially freestanding EDs – starting Jan. 1, 2023 – that can manage patients for a maximum of 24 hours.³

Community connections and proactive staffing

Lisa Kaufmann, MD, works as a hospitalist for a two-hospital system in North Carolina, Appalachian Regional Health Care. She practices at Watauga Medical Center, with 100 licensed beds in Boone, and at Cannon Memorial Hospital, a critical access hospital in unincorporated Linville. “We are proud of what we have been able to accomplish during the pandemic,” she said.

A former critical care unit at Watauga had been shut down, but its wiring remained intact. “We turned it into a COVID unit in three days. Then we opened another COVID unit with 18 beds, but that still wasn’t enough. We converted half of our med/surg capacity into a COVID unit. At one point almost half of all of our acute beds were for COVID patients. We made plans for what we would do if it got worse, since we had almost run out of beds,” she said. Demand peaked at the end of January 2021.

“The biggest barrier for us was if someone needed to be transferred, for example, if they needed ECMO [extracorporeal membrane oxygenation], and we couldn’t find another hospital to provide that technology.” In ARHC’s mountainous region – known as the “High Country” – weather can also make it difficult to transport patients. “Sometimes the ambulance can’t make it off the mountain, and half of the time the medical helicopter can’t fly. So we have to be prepared to keep people who we might think ought to be transferred,” she said.

Like many rural communities, the High Country is tightly knit, and its hospitals are really connected to their communities, Dr. Kaufmann said. The health system already had a lot of community connections beyond acute care, and that meant the pandemic wasn’t experienced as severely as it was in some other rural communities. “But without hospitalists in our hospitals, it would have been much more difficult.”

Proactive supply fulfillment meant that her hospitals never ran out of personal protective equipment. “Staffing was a challenge, but we were proactive in getting traveling doctors to come here. We also utilized extra doctors from the local community,” she said. Another key was well-established disaster planning, with regular drills, and a robust incident command structure, which just needed to be activated in the crisis. “Small hospitals need to be prepared for disaster,” Dr. Kaufmann said.

For Dale Wiersma, MD, a hospitalist with Spectrum Health, a 14-hospital system in western Michigan, telemedicine services are coordinated across 8 rural regional hospitals. “We don’t tend to use it for direct hospitalist work during daytime hours, unless a facility is swamped, in which case we can cross-cover. We do more telemedicine at night. But during daytime hours we have access to stroke neurology, cardiology, psychiatry, critical care and infectious disease specialists who are able to offer virtual consults,” Dr. Wiersma said. A virtual critical care team of doctor and nurse is often the only intensivist service covering Spectrum’s rural hospitals.

“In our system, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of telemedicine,” Dr. Wiersma said. “We had been working on the tele-ICU program, trying to get it rolled out. When the pandemic hit, we launched it in just 6 weeks.”

There have been several COVID surges in Michigan, he said. “We were stretched pretty close to our limit several times, but never to the breaking point. For our physicians, it was the protracted nature of the pandemic that was fatiguing for everyone involved. Our system worked hard to staff up as well as it could, to make sure our people didn’t go over the edge.” It was also hard for hospitals that typically might see one or two deaths in a month to suddenly have five in a week.

Another Spectrum hospitalist, Christopher Skinner, MD, works at two rural Michigan hospitals 15 minutes apart in Big Rapids and Reed City. “I prefer working in rural areas. I’ve never had an ambition to be a top dog. I like the style of practice where you don’t have all of the medical subspecialties on site. It frees you up to use all your skills,” Dr. Skinner said.

But that approach was put to the test by the pandemic, since it was harder to transfer those patients who normally would not have stayed at these rural hospitals. “We had to make do,” he said, although virtual backup and second opinions from Spectrum’s virtual critical care team helped.

“It was a great collaboration, which helped us to handle critical care cases that we hadn’t had to manage pre-COVID. We’ve gotten used to it, with the backup, so I expect we’ll still be taking care of these kind of sick ventilator patients even after the pandemic ends,” Dr. Skinner said. “We’ve gotten pretty good at it.”

Sukhbir Pannu, MD, a hospitalist in Denver and CEO and founder of Rural Physicians Group, said the pandemic was highly impactful, operationally and logistically, for his firm, which contracts with 54 hospitals to provide their hospitalist staffing. “There was no preparation. Everything had to be done on the fly. Initially, it was felt that rural areas weren’t at as great a risk for COVID, but that proved not to be true. Many experienced a sudden increase in very sick patients. We set up a task force to manage daily census in all of our contracted facilities.”

How did Rural Physicians Group manage through the crisis? “The short answer is telemedicine,” he said. “We had physicians on the ground in these hospitals. But we needed intensivists at the other end of the line to support them.” A lot of conversations about telemedicine were already going on in the company, but the pandemic provided the impetus to launch its network, which has grown to include rheumatologists, pulmonologists, cardiologists, infection medicine, neurology, and psychiatry, all reachable through a central command structure.

Telemedicine is not a cure-all, Dr. Pannu said. It doesn’t work in a vacuum. It requires both a provider on the ground and specialists available remotely. “But it can be a massive multiplier.”

Critical medicine

Other hospitals, including small and rural ones, have reported taking on the challenge of covering critical care with nonintensivist physicians because the pandemic demanded it. David Aymond, MD, a hospitalist at 60-bed Byrd Regional Hospital in Leesville, La., population 6,612, has advocated for years for expanded training and credentialing opportunities in intensive care medicine beyond the traditional path of becoming a board-certified intensivist. Some rural hospitalists were already experienced in providing critical care for ICU patients even before the pandemic hit.

“What COVID did was to highlight the problem that there aren’t enough intensivists in this country, particular for smaller hospitals,” Dr. Aymond said. Some hospitalists who stepped into crisis roles in ICUs during COVID surges showed that they could take care of COVID patients very well.

Dr. Aymond, who is a fellowship-trained hospitalist with primary training in family medicine, has used his ICU experience in both fellowship and practice to make a thorough study of critical care medicine, which he put to good use when the seven-bed ICU at Byrd Memorial filled with COVID patients. “Early on, we were managing multiple ventilators throughout the hospital,” he said. “But we were having good outcomes. Our COVID patients were surviving.” That led to Dr. Aymond being interviewed by local news media, which led to other patients across the state asking to be transferred to “the COVID specialist who practices at Byrd.”

Dr. Aymond would like to see opportunities for abbreviated 1-year critical care fellowships for hospitalists who have amassed enough ICU experience in practice or in residency, and to make room for family medicine physicians in such programs. He is also working through SHM with the Society of Critical Care Medicine to generate educational ICU content. SHM now has a critical care lecture series at: www.hospitalmedicine.org/clinical-topics/critical-care/.

Dr. Mandal, who also works as a pediatric hospitalist, said that experience gave her more familiarity with using noninvasive methods for delivering respiratory therapies like high-flow oxygen. “When I saw a COVID patient who had hypoxia but was still able to talk, I didn’t hesitate to deliver oxygen through noninvasive means.” Eventually hospital practice generally for COVID caught up with this approach.

But she ran into personal difficulties because N95 face masks didn’t fit her face. Instead, she had to wear a portable respirator, which made it hard to hear what her patients were saying. “I formulated a lot of workarounds, such as interviewing the patient over the phone before going into the room for the physical exam.”

Throughout the pandemic, she never wavered in her commitment to rural hospital medicine and its opportunities for working in a small and wonderful community, where she could practice at the top of her license, with a degree of autonomy not granted in other settings. For doctors who want that kind of practice, she said, “the rewards will be paid back in spades. That’s been my experience.”

For more information on SHM’s Rural SIG and its supports for rural hospitalists, contact its executive chair, Kenneth Simone, DO, at ksimone911@gmail.com.
 

References

1. Personal communication from Peiyin Hung, June 2021.

2. Association of Health Care Journalists. Rural Health Journalism Workshop 2021. June 21, 2021. https://healthjournalism.org/calendar-details.php?id=2369.

3. Congress Establishes New Medicare Provider Category and Reimbursement for Rural Emergency Hospitals. National Law Review. Jan. 5, 2021. https://www.natlawreview.com/article/congress-establishes-new-medicare-provider-category-and-reimbursement-rural.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, visitation in intensive care units has been restricted for obvious safety reasons, but such restrictions have contributed to the already serious strains on staff, results of a survey indicate.

Among 91 residents, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants who work in ICUs in the Emory Healthcare system, in Atlanta, two-thirds agreed that visitation restrictions were necessary, but nearly three-fourths said that the restrictions had a negative effect on their job satisfaction, and slightly more than half reported experiencing symptoms of burnout, wrote Nicole Herbst, MD, and Joanne Kuntz, MD, from Emory University School of Medicine.

“Because families are not present at bedside, restrictive visitation policies have necessitated that communication with families be more intentional and planned than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the ways these restrictions impact providers and patients can help guide future interventions to improve communication with families and reduce provider burnout,” the authors wrote in a poster presentation at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2021 Annual Meeting.
 

Valid concerns, negative effects

“During the COVID pandemic, we fell back into old ways of doing things, where parents were restricted from the bedsides of patients in the intensive care unit. And I think we have shown over the last decade that family presence at the bedside significantly improves outcomes for patients and also helps clinicians caring for those patients,” commented Christopher Carroll, MD, FCCP, from Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Hartford, in an interview.

“We had good reason to exclude visitors because we were worried about their own safety and their own health, but now 18 months into this pandemic, we know how to prevent COVID. We know now how to safely walk into the room of a patient who has COVID and walk out of it and not get infected. There’s no reason why we can’t relax these restrictions and allow families to be there with their loved ones,” continued Dr. Carroll, who was not involved in the study.

With visitation limited or banned outright, ICU staff have had to replace face-to-face discussion with more intentional, planned, and time-consuming methods, such as telephone calls and online video.

At the time of the survey, only two visitors were allowed to see patients in end-of-life situations in Emory ICUs. Exceptions to this rule were rare.
 

Study details

ICU staff members were asked about their communication practices, their attitudes about the effect of the restrictions on communication with families and job satisfaction, and about symptoms of burnout, using a validated single-item measure.

A total of 91 practitioners completed most of the survey questions. The results showed that more than half of all respondents (57.9%) reported spending more time communicating with families than they had the previous year.

A large majority (90.5%) also said that video communication (for example, with a tablet, personal device, or computer) was as effective or more effective than telephone communication.

In all, 64.3% of practitioners agreed that visitation restrictions were appropriate, but 71.4% said that the restrictions had a negative effect on their job satisfaction, and 51.8% reported experiencing symptoms of burnout, such as stress, low energy, exhaustion, or lack of motivation.

Casey Cable, MD, a pulmonary disease and critical care specialist at Virginia Commonwealth Medical Center, Richmond, Virginia, who was not involved in the study, did her fellowship at Emory. She told this news organization that the study findings might be skewed a bit by subjective impressions.

“I work in a level I trauma unit providing tertiary medical care, and we’re using more video to communicate with family members, more iPads,” she said. “Their finding is interesting that people felt that they were communicating more with family members, and I wonder if that’s a type of recall bias, because at the bedside, you can have a conversation, as opposed to actively talking to family members by calling them, videoing them, or whatnot, and I think that sticks in our head more, about putting in more effort. I don’t know if we are spending more time communicating with family or if that’s what we just recall.”

She agreed with the authors that visitation restrictions have a definite negative effect on job satisfaction and that they cause feelings of burnout.

“It’s tough not having families at bedside and offering them support. When visitors are not able to see how sick their family members are, it complicates discussions about end-of-life care, transitioning to comfort care, or maybe not doing everything,” she said.

No funding source for the study was reported. Dr. Herbst, Dr. Kuntz, Dr. Carroll, and Dr. Cable have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, visitation in intensive care units has been restricted for obvious safety reasons, but such restrictions have contributed to the already serious strains on staff, results of a survey indicate.

Among 91 residents, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants who work in ICUs in the Emory Healthcare system, in Atlanta, two-thirds agreed that visitation restrictions were necessary, but nearly three-fourths said that the restrictions had a negative effect on their job satisfaction, and slightly more than half reported experiencing symptoms of burnout, wrote Nicole Herbst, MD, and Joanne Kuntz, MD, from Emory University School of Medicine.

“Because families are not present at bedside, restrictive visitation policies have necessitated that communication with families be more intentional and planned than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the ways these restrictions impact providers and patients can help guide future interventions to improve communication with families and reduce provider burnout,” the authors wrote in a poster presentation at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2021 Annual Meeting.
 

Valid concerns, negative effects

“During the COVID pandemic, we fell back into old ways of doing things, where parents were restricted from the bedsides of patients in the intensive care unit. And I think we have shown over the last decade that family presence at the bedside significantly improves outcomes for patients and also helps clinicians caring for those patients,” commented Christopher Carroll, MD, FCCP, from Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Hartford, in an interview.

“We had good reason to exclude visitors because we were worried about their own safety and their own health, but now 18 months into this pandemic, we know how to prevent COVID. We know now how to safely walk into the room of a patient who has COVID and walk out of it and not get infected. There’s no reason why we can’t relax these restrictions and allow families to be there with their loved ones,” continued Dr. Carroll, who was not involved in the study.

With visitation limited or banned outright, ICU staff have had to replace face-to-face discussion with more intentional, planned, and time-consuming methods, such as telephone calls and online video.

At the time of the survey, only two visitors were allowed to see patients in end-of-life situations in Emory ICUs. Exceptions to this rule were rare.
 

Study details

ICU staff members were asked about their communication practices, their attitudes about the effect of the restrictions on communication with families and job satisfaction, and about symptoms of burnout, using a validated single-item measure.

A total of 91 practitioners completed most of the survey questions. The results showed that more than half of all respondents (57.9%) reported spending more time communicating with families than they had the previous year.

A large majority (90.5%) also said that video communication (for example, with a tablet, personal device, or computer) was as effective or more effective than telephone communication.

In all, 64.3% of practitioners agreed that visitation restrictions were appropriate, but 71.4% said that the restrictions had a negative effect on their job satisfaction, and 51.8% reported experiencing symptoms of burnout, such as stress, low energy, exhaustion, or lack of motivation.

Casey Cable, MD, a pulmonary disease and critical care specialist at Virginia Commonwealth Medical Center, Richmond, Virginia, who was not involved in the study, did her fellowship at Emory. She told this news organization that the study findings might be skewed a bit by subjective impressions.

“I work in a level I trauma unit providing tertiary medical care, and we’re using more video to communicate with family members, more iPads,” she said. “Their finding is interesting that people felt that they were communicating more with family members, and I wonder if that’s a type of recall bias, because at the bedside, you can have a conversation, as opposed to actively talking to family members by calling them, videoing them, or whatnot, and I think that sticks in our head more, about putting in more effort. I don’t know if we are spending more time communicating with family or if that’s what we just recall.”

She agreed with the authors that visitation restrictions have a definite negative effect on job satisfaction and that they cause feelings of burnout.

“It’s tough not having families at bedside and offering them support. When visitors are not able to see how sick their family members are, it complicates discussions about end-of-life care, transitioning to comfort care, or maybe not doing everything,” she said.

No funding source for the study was reported. Dr. Herbst, Dr. Kuntz, Dr. Carroll, and Dr. Cable have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, visitation in intensive care units has been restricted for obvious safety reasons, but such restrictions have contributed to the already serious strains on staff, results of a survey indicate.

Among 91 residents, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants who work in ICUs in the Emory Healthcare system, in Atlanta, two-thirds agreed that visitation restrictions were necessary, but nearly three-fourths said that the restrictions had a negative effect on their job satisfaction, and slightly more than half reported experiencing symptoms of burnout, wrote Nicole Herbst, MD, and Joanne Kuntz, MD, from Emory University School of Medicine.

“Because families are not present at bedside, restrictive visitation policies have necessitated that communication with families be more intentional and planned than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding the ways these restrictions impact providers and patients can help guide future interventions to improve communication with families and reduce provider burnout,” the authors wrote in a poster presentation at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2021 Annual Meeting.
 

Valid concerns, negative effects

“During the COVID pandemic, we fell back into old ways of doing things, where parents were restricted from the bedsides of patients in the intensive care unit. And I think we have shown over the last decade that family presence at the bedside significantly improves outcomes for patients and also helps clinicians caring for those patients,” commented Christopher Carroll, MD, FCCP, from Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Hartford, in an interview.

“We had good reason to exclude visitors because we were worried about their own safety and their own health, but now 18 months into this pandemic, we know how to prevent COVID. We know now how to safely walk into the room of a patient who has COVID and walk out of it and not get infected. There’s no reason why we can’t relax these restrictions and allow families to be there with their loved ones,” continued Dr. Carroll, who was not involved in the study.

With visitation limited or banned outright, ICU staff have had to replace face-to-face discussion with more intentional, planned, and time-consuming methods, such as telephone calls and online video.

At the time of the survey, only two visitors were allowed to see patients in end-of-life situations in Emory ICUs. Exceptions to this rule were rare.
 

Study details

ICU staff members were asked about their communication practices, their attitudes about the effect of the restrictions on communication with families and job satisfaction, and about symptoms of burnout, using a validated single-item measure.

A total of 91 practitioners completed most of the survey questions. The results showed that more than half of all respondents (57.9%) reported spending more time communicating with families than they had the previous year.

A large majority (90.5%) also said that video communication (for example, with a tablet, personal device, or computer) was as effective or more effective than telephone communication.

In all, 64.3% of practitioners agreed that visitation restrictions were appropriate, but 71.4% said that the restrictions had a negative effect on their job satisfaction, and 51.8% reported experiencing symptoms of burnout, such as stress, low energy, exhaustion, or lack of motivation.

Casey Cable, MD, a pulmonary disease and critical care specialist at Virginia Commonwealth Medical Center, Richmond, Virginia, who was not involved in the study, did her fellowship at Emory. She told this news organization that the study findings might be skewed a bit by subjective impressions.

“I work in a level I trauma unit providing tertiary medical care, and we’re using more video to communicate with family members, more iPads,” she said. “Their finding is interesting that people felt that they were communicating more with family members, and I wonder if that’s a type of recall bias, because at the bedside, you can have a conversation, as opposed to actively talking to family members by calling them, videoing them, or whatnot, and I think that sticks in our head more, about putting in more effort. I don’t know if we are spending more time communicating with family or if that’s what we just recall.”

She agreed with the authors that visitation restrictions have a definite negative effect on job satisfaction and that they cause feelings of burnout.

“It’s tough not having families at bedside and offering them support. When visitors are not able to see how sick their family members are, it complicates discussions about end-of-life care, transitioning to comfort care, or maybe not doing everything,” she said.

No funding source for the study was reported. Dr. Herbst, Dr. Kuntz, Dr. Carroll, and Dr. Cable have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Background: Geographic cohorting localizes hospitalist teams to a single unit. It has previously been shown to improve outcomes.

An important limitation of this study is that the investigators did not evaluate clinical outcomes or provider satisfaction. This may give some pause to the widespread push toward geographic cohorting.

Bottom line: More frequent interruptions may partially offset potential increases in patient-hospitalist interactions achieved through geographic cohorting.

Citation: Kara A et al. A time motion study evaluating the impact of geographic cohorting of hospitalists. J Hosp Med. 2020;15:338-44.

Dr. Sweigart is a hospitalist at the Lexington (Ky.) VA Health Care System.

Background: Geographic cohorting localizes hospitalist teams to a single unit. It has previously been shown to improve outcomes.

An important limitation of this study is that the investigators did not evaluate clinical outcomes or provider satisfaction. This may give some pause to the widespread push toward geographic cohorting.

Bottom line: More frequent interruptions may partially offset potential increases in patient-hospitalist interactions achieved through geographic cohorting.

Citation: Kara A et al. A time motion study evaluating the impact of geographic cohorting of hospitalists. J Hosp Med. 2020;15:338-44.

Dr. Sweigart is a hospitalist at the Lexington (Ky.) VA Health Care System.

Background: Geographic cohorting localizes hospitalist teams to a single unit. It has previously been shown to improve outcomes.

An important limitation of this study is that the investigators did not evaluate clinical outcomes or provider satisfaction. This may give some pause to the widespread push toward geographic cohorting.

Bottom line: More frequent interruptions may partially offset potential increases in patient-hospitalist interactions achieved through geographic cohorting.

Citation: Kara A et al. A time motion study evaluating the impact of geographic cohorting of hospitalists. J Hosp Med. 2020;15:338-44.

Dr. Sweigart is a hospitalist at the Lexington (Ky.) VA Health Care System.