An evolving specialty in the healthcare industry is that of a hospitalist. While some children want to group up to be a neurosurgeon or a gynecologist, others now have the option of becoming a hospitalist.

Focusing its practice to hospital medicine, this up and coming specialty is immersed in the hospital setting. An initial role for this specialist was as a link between a hospitalized patient and an off-site physician. Whereas physicians typically spend part of their day seeing patients in their office and part of their day making the rounds at the hospitals with which they are affiliated, now an off-site physician can rely on a hospitalist to care for their hospitalized patients. This includes emergency room patients as well as those who are admitted.

The specialty developed as an answer to the many demands placed on a doctor while at the same time physician salaries were decreasing because of the influx of managed healthcare. Also influencing the new specialty were the limits placed on the hours interns and residents were allowed to spend in a hospital.

A hospitalist has the same medical training as any M.D. or D.O. The difference is that this newer practice is focused on hospital medicine rather than in an off-site practice. These specialists work with a variety of patients from those with mere sniffles to those with complex cardiovascular problems. Just as other physicians, some hospitalists specialize in a particular field of medicine such as internal medicine or neurology. While one may work with ears, noses, and throats, others may work with tibiae, fibulae and femurs. Others are generalists.

A hospitalist in Cheyenne can be the connection between a physician and the hospital, attending more readily to the hospitalized patient’s ongoing requirements. The practice of hospital medicine can be very sophisticated. Changes are ongoing, sometimes making it difficult for an off-site physician to keep up with current protocols. Doctors in this specialty, on the other hand, are engrossed in the hospital setting and, consequently, the ongoing rules and regulations.

There are at least two main avenues for obtaining a job in this specialty. One is through a hospital itself. Many hospitals have in place their own practices so that they do the interviewing, hiring, etc., and the individual is employed directly by them. Hospitalist practices also exist whereby the practices are affiliated with certain hospitals but the practice hires and employs the individual.

Although a relatively young practice, hospitalists are growing in number and presence in the medical industry.