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Hospital hires inpatient doctors to improve care

Bethany Bruner, Staff Writer

Staying in the hospital can seem like a ride on a Ferris wheel of nurses — one to take your blood, one to check your temperature and vitals and another to give you medication.

A new program at McCullough-Hyde Memorial Hospital (MHMH) is hoping to give patients more interaction with their physicians and not just nurses.

Recently, MHMH's board of trustees approved the implementation of a hospitalist program.

Dr. Madhu Chalasani is one of the three doctors classified as a hospitalist.

"Most hospitals have hospitalists," he said. "We take care of patients while they are in the hospital."

Bryan Hehemann, president and chief executive officer of MHMH, said the hospital felt primary care physicians would benefit from this service because they could focus on their practices more and not be at the hospital.

He said patients would benefit as well because they get more contact with the doctor treating them at the hospital.

"Hospitalists are nice to have because they don't do outpatient care and help hospitals customize approaches to certain disease categories," Hehemann said. "Having them here helps reduce drug usage and patients' length of stay."

Chalasani said the hospitalists are dedicated to doing work at the hospital.

"We do in-house rounding and take calls from home at night," Chalasani said.

Chalasani said he and the other two hospitalists, Dr. Ranjit Katneni and Dr. Lotfi Mamlouk, admit patients for acute medical conditions and they also admit people who do not have family doctors.

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Hehemann said some family doctors have opted to use the hospitalist service to focus on their external practices, but not all specialties feel the same way.

"Primary care physicians work here voluntarily," Hehemann said. "Some are choosing to use hospitalists, but not all of them. Internal medicine does not like to use hospitalists, for example, because they like the patient interaction and the work they do here."

With some doctors opting to not retain their primary care physician privileges at MHMH, Hehemann said the hospital has opened their doors to nearby physicians who are not staff.

"We're handing over some of the care to hospitalists now," Hehemann said.

What does this mean for students looking to break into the medical profession if doctors are working in external practices or the hospital rather than in both?

Sophomore Will Poindexter, a microbiology major with a pre-medicine focus, doesn't think having more hospitalists will affect the job market.

"The only thing is that people might be more comfortable with their own doctor," Poindexter said. "Or they might be more comfortable with the people that refer them to the hospital so they'll (MHMH) have to give way to that."