Group #1: Jamie Newman (USA); Guilherme Barcellos (Brazil); Andrés Aizman (Chile); Fernando Rivera (USA); Luiz Rojas Orellana (Chile); Neil Winawer (USA); Esteban Gandara (Canada); Jairo Roa (Colombia)

Group#2 (2010-now): Guilherme Barcellos (Brazil); Jamie Newman (USA); Andrés Aizman (Chile); Daniel Grassi (Argentina); Fernando Rivera (USA); Luiz Rojas Orellana (Chile); Roberto Daniel Martinez (Argentina); Lucas Zambon (Brazil); Neil Winawer (USA); Esteban Gandara (Canada); Fabiana Rolla (Brazil)

Monday, May 16, 2011

The Hospitalist Field Turns 15: What The Past Says About The Future


By 2000, when I assumed SHM’s presidency, I worried terribly about our field being branded as being all about saving money for hospitals – not a particularly satisfying self-identify for a professional, and highly vulnerable to caricature (think “death panels” and you’ll know what I mean).

Luckily, in 2000 the Institute of Medicine published To Err is Human. After that seminal publication, I strongly suspected that the field of patient safety would take off, and it didn’t take a genius to realize that a parallel healthcare quality movement would follow closely behind. We recognized that hospitalists had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to brand ourselves as being about quality improvement and patient safety, not just cost-savings.