Published online February 1, 2007
PEDIATRICS Vol. 119 No. 2 February 2007, pp. 412 (doi:10.1542/peds.2006-3085)

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Residency Faculty as Hospitalists

Peter C. Smith, MD
BIGHORN Practice-Based Research Network
Family Medicine
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
Denver, CO 80045-0508

To the Editor.—

I read with interest the study by Boyd et al, who compared community-based faculty and 2 private hospitalist groups.¹ We conducted a similar study and compared hospitalists with both community family practice faculty who rotated regularly through a dedicated hospital service and traditional primary care providers.² Looking at severity-adjusted pneumonia care, we found that the community primary care providers had the lowest costs, resource utilization, and length of stay, followed by the faculty and then the hospitalists. Clinical outcomes did not differ. Our findings corroborate the authors' suggestion that continuity indeed may influence important hospital outcomes. Residency faculty in training programs frequently combine good continuity with blocks of time exclusively dedicated to inpatient care and, as such, can play a valuable role by providing high-quality, efficient care for community hospitals. Recent efforts to replace residency programs with hospitalist teams³ on the basis of unfounded assertions of superior efficiency may be unfounded.

REFERENCES

1. Boyd J, Samaddar K, Parra-Roide L, Allen EP, White B. Comparison of outcome measures for a traditional pediatric faculty service and nonfaculty hospitalist services in a community teaching hospital. Pediatrics. 2006;118 :1327 –1331[Abstract/Free Full Text]
2. Smith PC, Westfall JM, Nicholas RA. Primary care family physicians and 2 hospitalist models: comparison of outcomes, processes, and costs. J Fam Pract. 2002;51 :1021 –1027[Web of Science][Medline]
3. Gonzalez EH, Phillips RL Jr, Pugno PA. A study of closure of family practice residency programs. Fam Med. 2003;35 :706 –710[Web of Science][Medline]

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PEDIATRICS (ISSN 1098-4275). ©2007 by the American Academy of Pediatrics

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This Article Extract Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to My File Cabinet Download to citation manager Request Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Smith, P. C. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Smith, P. C. Related Collections Office Practice Social Bookmarking                         What's this?