Onco-Hospitalists Bring Value to Patient Care

Most working hospitalists will see cancer patients regularly on their hospital rounds since it’s the main underlying condition for many hospital admissions—whether for the disease itself, side effects from cancer treatments, or possibly coincidental medical issues. But a smaller number of hospitalists are focusing their practices on oncology patients, working with oncologists who—like many outpatient-based physicians before them throughout the history of hospital medicine—have found it ever harder to make in-person visits to their patients in the hospital. At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York, which has one of the first and largest oncology hospitalist groups with nearly 60 members, the hospitalists assume responsibility for managing the care of patients admitted to the cancer center, consulting when needed by phone or email with the patients’ oncologists. Dr. Egan “We were founded 19 years ago when I was hired as Memorial’s first hospitalist,” said Barbara Egan, MD, FACP, SFHM, chief of the hospital medicine service at MSKCC. “I think it started as something of an experiment by the chief of gastrointestinal oncology at the time, Dr. David Kelsen, who had an insight that what was bringing cancer patients into the hospital was mostly internal medicine problems like symptom management, infections, and late- or end-stage disease management.” These did not require the expertise of a medical oncologist, she explained. “He convinced ...
Source: The Hospitalist - Category: Hospital Management Authors: Tags: Career Oncology Patient Care Source Type: research