WHEN IT COMES to covering nights, nearly two-thirds of hospitalist groups rely on nocturnists.
In our latest Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Survey, 61.6% of adult hospitalists said their groups use nocturnists to cover nights, eclipsing any other strategy. Just under one-quarter told us their groups use primarily nocturnists with hospitalists rotating to cover some shifts, while close to 17% said their groups rotate hospitalists to fill nights.
Among adult groups, nocturnists were most popular with national hospitalist management companies (used by 69.9%) and universities/medical schools (69.2%). Nocturnists were the least used by multispecialty/primary care groups (48.8%).
Our survey found that night work for pediatric hospitalists is a little tougher, with only 18.2% of pediatric groups reporting that they use nocturnists. Pediatric hospitalists told us that 65.9% of their groups rotate hospitalists to cover nights. Another 20.5% said their group used residents.
Here are some other differences in how hospitalist groups are covering nights.
Academic vs. nonacademic night coverage
Nonacademic groups are slightly more likely to use nocturnists (65.2% use them) than their academic counterparts (58.6%). Academic groups, on the other hand, are slightly more likely to use APPs to cover nights (16.2%) than nonacademic groups (11.3%). Academic groups are also a bit more likely to use moonlighters (12.1%) than nonacademic groups (7.7%).
How do hospitalist groups cover nights?
Nocturnists: 61.6%
Primarily nocturnists/hospitalists rotating some shifts: 22.0%
Hospitalists rotate: 16.8%
APPs: 14.2%
Moonlighters: 9.1%
Residents: 7.3%
On-call coverage/off-site physician: 6.7%
Telemedicine: 3.1%
None of these: 1.1%
Don’t cover nights: 0.7%
Rotating hospitalists to cover nights
Rotating hospitalists to cover nights is most popular among multispecialty/primary care groups, where it’s used by 27.9%. It’s least popular among local hospitalist groups (2.0%). By geographic region, rotating hospitalists is most common among groups in the Mountain region (27.3%) and least common in the South (10.1%).
How many hospitalist groups use nocturnists (by region)?
Northeast: 70.6%
South: 71.2%
Midwest: 46.8%
Mountain: 42.4%
Southwest: 63.6%
Pacific: 60.8%
APPs and night work
APPs are the least popular among national hospitalist management companies (used by 8.2%) and the most among groups at universities/medical schools (21.2%). By geography, APPs are most popular in the South (18.7%) and least popular in the Pacific region (3.9%).
How many hospitalists use nocturnists (by group type)?
Nat. hosp. mgmt. group: 69.9%
University/med. school: 69.2%
Hospital/hospital corp.: 62.0%
Local hosp. group: 52.9%
Multispecialty/PCP group: 48.8%
VIEW DATA ON HOSPITALIST PAY from both the 2024 and the 2023 Today’s Hospitalist Compensation & Career Surveys. Our annual surveys examine how hospitalist compensation is affected by factors such as the type of patients hospitalists treat, the number of shifts they work, the number of patients they see per shift and more.
