The New England Journal of Medicine, March 12, 2009
UTMB researchers, led by Yong-Fang Kuo, have produced the first quantitative analysis of the increase in the number of hospitalists. The researchers, which include Gulshan Sharma, Jean Freeman and James Goodwin, used Medicare data to calculate that the percentage of internal medicine physicians practicing as hospitalists jumped from 5.9 percent in 1995 to 19 percent in 2006. “These analyses show a substantial increase in the care of hospitalized patients by hospitalists,” Kuo said in a news release about the publication of the research. “Many researchers have raised questions about the growth of hospitalist care having an impact on the continuity of patient care, the role of the primary care physician, patient satisfaction and the patient-physician relationship. This study doesn’t answer those questions, but it does give us the first real statistical picture of the phenomenon.” The UTMB research prompted the journal to write an editorial about hospitalists.