CareMore’s Emerging Medical Specialty is seen at Forefront of Caring for the Very Ill

ORANGE COUNTY, Calif – They take care of the very sick in the hospital. Most of them do not have office hours. But they are committed to a new way of taking care of patients when it matters the most. These are doctors called “hospitalists,” and those who practice in CareMore Medical Group have paved the way for a recent trend sweeping the halls of hospitals across the nation.

Hospitalists, or intensivists, specialize in taking care of the very ill in a hospital, freeing up a patient’s primary care physician to concentrate on taking care of patients in the office.

For Charles Holzner, M.D., the chief hospitalist with CareMore Medical Group, hospital inpatients are the focus of his medical practice. By working in hospitals associated with CareMore, hospitalists like Dr. Holzner provide their office-based colleagues with the option of expanding their office hours by not having to make hospital rounds.

“Often, it’s a significant drain on the resources of physicians to have them leave their offices to take care of patients in the hospital,” says Dr. Holzner, an internist. His role and that of his colleagues is to manage the patient’s overall inpatient treatment as well as to consult with the patient’s primary care physician. Depending on the patient’s particular health problem, other medical specialists may be called in -- all coordinated by the hospitalist.

“Hospitalists such as Dr. Holzner, by working as a team with our other physicians, help to streamline the use of hospital services and to improve the care of our patients. Hospitalists know how the hospital works. They see very ill patients day and night and know the kind of problems that can occur in the hospital and also when the patients return home,” said (name) of CareMore. “Moreover, by coordinating care with their colleagues, they can use hospital resources at a more efficient level because they do it all the time. Conversely, most family practice physicians spend less time in the hospital. They often see their patients on the way to the office in the morning – and spend the rest of the day managing patient care by phone between office visits.” Dr. Zinberg cited data that compares the average length of stay for the group’s managed senior patients with that of family physicians and specialists directly admitting and caring for their senior patients at the same hospitals.

“Our average length of stay was less than half that of those physicians and our readmission rate was also lower. This tends to underscore the value and effectiveness of a hospitalist system,” he said.

Managing a patient from the emergency room, through testing, overseeing their treatment, and also ensuring their further care at home, requires Dr. Holzner and his team of hospitalists to spend more time with hospitalized patients than office-based doctors.

He says they divide their time between the hospital’s emergency department, the medical floors, the intensive care unit and also in the various outpatient clinics the group has established to care for the frail-elderly. “I was trained in a university hospital setting where I saw all kinds of life and death situations. It’s very satisfying to see very ill patients get better and go home. That’s why I became a physician.”