SEQUOYAH MEMORIAL HOSPITAL HOSPITALIST PROGRAM

In August 2006, Sequoyah Memorial began a Hospitalist program, a program intended to boost the quality of care a patient receives during his or her stay in the hospital.

A hospitalist is an individual who stays in close proximity to the hospital and is available to hospital patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They typically follow patients admitted to the hospital by the patient’s primary care physician, taking over the inpatient care for local doctors, should the doctor choose to use their services. Hospitalists are trained in a variety of specialties such as Family Practice, General Medicine, or Internal Medicine; their primary purpose is to treat hospitalized patients. A hospitalist program has many benefits. A patient’s primary care physician may choose to, upon admitting a patient to the hospital, use the hospitalist’s services if he or she has decided to limit their practice to strictly outpatient medicine or if their practice is too far from the hospital to visit the patient regularly and provide quality care. The hospitalist and the primary care physician work closely as a team to coordinate the best quality care for the patient. The program is also beneficial for patients who do not have an established primary care physician.

Patients receive quality care from an in house physician who may respond to their needs within minutes.