MULTIDISCIPLINARY ROUNDS are a way of life for hospitalist groups, but about 20% of hospitalists told us their groups don’t rely on that strategy. Who are these groups, and what’s their history with these rounds.
According to data from our survey, about 81% of adult hospitalists use multidisciplinary rounds. But about 15% of hospitalists said their groups don’t deploy such rounds at all, while another 4% said their group had previously participated in these rounds but stopped.
Just under 1% of hospitalists said their groups were planning to move to rounds that work with other specialties.
Pediatric hospitalists were somewhat less likely to conduct rounds with other disciplines although 68.2% told us their groups participate in such rounds. And among adult hospitalists, nonacademic hospitalist groups were slightly less likely to use multidisciplinary rounds (75.4%) than academic groups (81.5%).
Rounds by employer type
Multidisciplinary rounds are most popular among national hospitalist management companies: 92.3% of hospitalists working in these groups said they use the strategy.
Such rounds are the least popular at multispecialty/primary care groups with only 63.2% of these hospitalists saying their groups participate in multidisciplinary rounds. That’s almost 20% lower than the average for all adult hospitalists of 80.9%.
One interesting data point: 15.8% of hospitalists working at multispecialty/primary care groups said they had used these rounds before but stopped. That was the highest percentage response to that question on our entire survey.
Nearly 20% of hospitalists working for hospitals and for universities/medical schools also reported not using multidisciplinary rounds.
And 9.5% of hospitalists working for local hospitalist groups said they had used these rounds before but stopped.
My group multidisciplinary rounds: employer type
• Nat. hosp. mgmt. co.: 92.3%
• University/med. school: 81.8%
• Local hosp. group: 81.0%
• Hospital/hospital corporations: 79.8%
• Multispecialty/PCP group: 63.2%
Rounds by geography
Our data found some differences in how hospitalist groups use multidisciplinary rounds by geography. Hospitalists in the Mountain region, for example, were most likely to use multidisciplinary rounds (92.9%), while those in the Midwest were the least likely (76.7%).
And about 10% of hospitalists in the Midwest and Pacific regions said their groups had used multidisciplinary rounds before but had stopped.
My group uses multidisciplinary rounds: geography
• Mountain: 92.9%
• Northeast” 86.0%
• Southwest: 83.3%
• South: 81.4%
• Pacific: 77.3%
• Midwest: 76.7%
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.
