• J Hosp Med · Aug 2024

    Virtual hospital care development and deployment: A rapid qualitative study of frontline clinicians and leaders.

    • Matthew Sakumoto, Michelle Knees, Kendall Rogers, Ankur Segon, Sara Westergaard, Amy Yu, Angela Keniston, and Marisha Burden.
    • Department of Medicine, UCSF, San Francisco, California, USA.
    • J Hosp Med. 2024 Aug 1; 19 (8): 685692685-692.

    BackgroundVirtual hospitalist programs are rapidly growing in popularity due to worsening clinician shortages and increased pressure for flexible work options. These programs also have the potential to establish sustainable staffing models across multiple hospitals optimizing cost. We aimed to explore the current state of virtual hospitalist services at various health systems, challenges and opportunities that exist in providing virtual care, and future opportunities for these types of services.ObjectivesTo identify perspectives on design and implementation of virtual hospitalist programs from academic hospitalist leaders.MethodsWe conducted focus groups with United States academic hospitalist leaders. Semistructured interviews explored experiences with virtual hospitalist programs. Using rapid qualitative methods including templated summaries and matrix analysis, focus group recordings were analyzed to identify key themes.ResultsWe conducted four focus groups with 13 participants representing nine hospital systems across six geographic regions and range of experience with virtual hospital medicine care. Thematic analysis identified three themes: (1) a broad spectrum of virtual care delivery; (2) adoption and acceptance of virtual care models followed the stages of diffusion of innovation; and (3) sustainability and scalability of programs were affected by unclear finances.ConclusionsHospitalist leader perspectives revealed complex factors influencing virtual care adoption and implementation. Addressing concerns about care quality, financing, and training may accelerate adoption. Further research should clarify the best practices for sustainable models optimized for access, hospitalist experience, patient safety, and financial viability.© 2024 The Authors. Journal of Hospital Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society of Hospital Medicine.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…