PCPs Deliver Best Inpatient Care, Study Suggests

https://goo.gl/AkGqGf

Amid the steady rise of the hospitalist model, inpatients cared for by their own primary care physicians experience lower length of stay and reduced mortality compared to hospitalists and covering generalists, according to a study published by JAMA Internal Medicine.

These findings appear to contradict previous research suggesting that hospitalists delivered more efficient and higher quality care, which authors of the new study allege faced substantial limitations. Previous studies, for example, did not differentiate among nonhospitalist physicians based on prior knowledge of the patient.

The study compared patient outcomes among three types of inpatient care delivery:

  • PCPs with existing relationships with the patients
  • Hospitalists with extensive knowledge of the hospital
  • Generalists without previous familiarity with the patients or the hospital
"Our study is the first to distinguish between these two different types of outpatient physicians compared with hospitalists," wrote Jennifer P. Stevens, MD, MS, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, and colleagues in their report.