Thursday, April 24, 2014

SHM 2014: What was all the excitement about?

To answer that question let’s take another look at Bob Wachter’s post about the conference. Bob, after all, is tuned in to the hospital medicine zeitgeist if anyone is. So what was Bob excited about? Well, the incredible growth of our field, hospitalists “taking over the world” of inpatient care, and the fact that the CMS Chief Medical Officer and the nominee for surgeon general are hospitalists. Wonderful. So where was the excitement about the latest in critical care, nephrology and cardiovascular disease? There’s been some real cool stuff that’s come out in the past year!

I’m not picking on Bob these days but chose to center my discussion points around his comments because I believe they reflect the overall focus of our professional society (which I think is misguided) and he articulates them well.

The problem illustrated here is that we're losing our clinical focus. If we want value why not focus on being the best clinicians available to care for these incredibly sick and complex patients? It’s not measurable in any meaningful way but something we could embrace.

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