• Anne S Linker, Shradha A Kulkarni, Gopi J Astik, Angela Keniston, Matthew Sakumoto, Shaker M Eid, Marisha Burden, Luci K Leykum, and HOMERuN COVID-19 Collaborative Working Group.
• Division of Hospital Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital/Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA. anne.linker@mountsinai.org.
• J Gen Intern Med. 2021 Nov 1; 36 (11): 3456-3461.

BackgroundMedical centers across the country have had to rapidly adapt clinician staffing strategies to accommodate large influxes of patients with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).ObjectiveWe sought to understand the adaptations and staffing strategies that US academic medical centers employed in the inpatient setting early in the spread of COVID-19, and to assess whether those changes were sustained during the first phase of the pandemic.DesignCross-sectional survey assessing organization-level, team-level, and clinician-level inpatient workforce adaptations.ParticipantsHospital medicine leadership at 27 academic medical centers in the USA.Key ResultsTwenty-seven of 36 centers responded to the survey (75%). Widespread practices included frequent staffing reassessment, organization-level changes such as geographic cohorting and redeployment of non-hospitalists, and exempting high-risk healthcare workers from direct care of patients with COVID-19. Several practices were implemented but discontinued, such as reduction of non-essential services, indicating that they were less sustainable for large centers.ConclusionThese findings provide guidance for inpatient leaders seeking to identify sustainable practices for COVID-19 inpatient workforce planning.© 2021. Society of General Internal Medicine.

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