Accelerated Hospital Medicine Program Startup Yields Significant Metric Results In Under Six Months

Strategy

Before deploying any changes, the SCP HM team held frequent onsite meetings with existing staff (both locums and employees), leadership, and administration. This immersion accomplished two early wins: building deep trust and uncovering important challenges.

The program was operating with three physicians and one NP/PA managing 136 patients. Many of those providers were admitting and consulting inappropriately, leading to dips in both provider engagement and patient experience. With no incumbent HM physicians and a sub-30-day startup time, SCP had much to accomplish in very little time. With the medical center fully invested, informed, and on board with making transformational changes, SCP promptly:

• Executed an efficient, effective recruiting and onboarding process to hire 5 new FTE NPs/PAs and physicians in under 30 days
• Held in-person, data-based conversations with providers to educate them on more effective and appropriate admission and consultation practices
• Launched multiple subcommittees focused on the different angles and aspects of how LOS and throughput can be improved
• Began work on documentation improvement and redesign of templates for wRVU and case mix index