Restructuring an Academic Pediatric Inpatient Service Using Concepts Developed by Hospitalists

In an effort to increase continuity of inpatient care by attending physicians, decrease use of hospital resources, and improve medical education without compromising quality of care, an inpatient pediatric ward service was restructured by using concepts developed by hospitalists. This reorganization reduced the number of yearly inpatient attendings, added a consistent 14-day call schedule, and eliminated attending outpatient responsibilities during their ward service. The restructured ward service attending acted as the attending of record for all general and specialty patients, excluding hematology/oncology, with the subspecialists fulfilling a consultant role. To evaluate the impact of this restructuring, a baseline year of the traditional ward service (TWS) was compared with a subsequent year of the restructured ward service (RWS). Our goal was to evaluate the impact of this new system on average costs of hospitalization, length of stay, resource utilization, inpatient mortality, and 7- and 31-day readmission rates. Hospital costs per patient were lower by 13% (p=0.018) in the restructured system. Average lengths of stay in an observation bed were significantly lower on the RWS (p=0.007), but there was no significant difference in admission length of stay. There was decreased resource utilization for laboratory and radiology tests (p<0.01) on the restructured service. Readmission rates were not significantly changed, and satisfaction among attendings, housestaff, students, and patients was uniformly high in both groups. A reorganized academic pediatric medical service, which allows specific attendings to focus on inpatient care and teaching, can decrease hospital resource utilization without compromising the quality of patient care or medical education.