Hospitalists Take Over San Diego, USA

Main Category: Conferences
Also Included In: Public Health
Article Date: 14 Apr 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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For three days San Diego will be home to the largest gathering ever of hospitalists and healthcare professionals at Hospital Medicine 2008, the Society of Hospital Medicine's (SHM) Annual Meeting, making this the largest meeting on record with over 1500 in attendance.

"SHM is extremely privileged to have three of the finest experts in the on the national healthcare scene addressing our attendees," said Larry Wellikson, MD, SHM's chief executive officer. "These leaders are willing to share their time and ideas with our nation's hospitalists, because they see this fast growing medical specialty as the doctors committed to improving the very systems of care in our nation's hospitals."

Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, Ian Morrison, PhD, and Robert Wachter, MD, are in San Diego to address attendees on healthcare quality, safety, and the hospital of the future. Dr. Donald Berwick is founder, president and chief executive officer for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI), and is most noted for orchestrating two of the best-known quality improvement campaigns in healthcare; the 100,000 Lives Campaign and the 5 Million Lives Saved from Harm Campaign. Dr. Berwick addressed the standing room only opening session today about how hospitalists can be the army for change in improving quality and safety in America's hospitals.

Ian Morrison, PhD is a nationally recognized author, consultant and healthcare futurist. Dr. Morrison will speak tomorrow about the future of healthcare and the role that hospital medicine will have in the hospital of the future.

Also speaking tomorrow is Robert Wachter, M.D., professor and associate chairman of the University of California, San Francisco's (UCSF) Department of Medicine. Wachter has published nearly 200 articles and five books in clinical epidemiology, health policy, and ethics.

Since coining the term "hospitalist" in a 1996 NEJM article, he has been a national leader of the specialty. He edits the field's leading textbook and is a past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine. Dr. Wachter is also author of the healthcare blog, Wachter's World, which addresses issues in patient safety and healthcare quality.

Dr. Wachter will speak about how hospitalists can thrive in the face of co-management, non-teaching service and the reality of perceptual change.

You can read more about the events of Hospital Medicine 2008, by visiting the Hospital Medicine 2008 blog at http://www.hospitalmedicine.org/shmblog.

The Society of Hospital Medicine is the premier medical society representing the nation's 20,000 hospitalists, physicians whose primary focus is the care of hospitalized patients. Over the past decade, research studies proving that hospitalists decrease patient lengths of stay, hospital costs and patient mortality rates while increasing patient satisfaction, have galvanized the hospital medicine profession and spurred demand for hospitalists nationwide.

Society of Hospital Medicine