Hospital Medicine

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At UT Southwestern Medical Center, our medical service is organized to provide specialty care for complicated medical conditions. Some patients have medical problems that overlap several specialties and require the broad medical knowledge of inpatient internists, also called hospitalists. These physicians provide the most effective bedside care for patients throughout their hospital stay and then help them transition to other care facilities or home, when discharged.

Thanks to our hospitalists and their dedicated colleagues, our hospitalized patients receive exceptional care 24 hours a day, seven days a week for all types of conditions, from the common to the complex.

Round-the-Clock Expert Care for Patients in Our Hospitals

Hospital medicine is a subspecialty of internal medicine in which physicians focus exclusively on caring for hospitalized patients. Also known as hospitalists, hospital medicine physicians are available in-house around the clock to address any patient needs.

Hospitalists coordinate care with patients’ primary care providers and other UT Southwestern specialists. Throughout each patient’s hospital stay, our hospitalists ensure that patients are comfortable and receive the care they need. Our hospitalists also communicate with patients and their family members to help them understand their condition, treatment options, progress, and recovery.

Hospital Medicine Services We Provide

Our hospitalists provide a wide variety of services for hospitalized patients and their families. Hospitalist care includes:

Performing patient rounds
Conducting exams
Ordering tests and reviewing results
Monitoring progress
Adjusting or prescribing medications and other treatment as necessary
Providing and communicating discharge plans, such as details about care provided, medications, and follow-up visits

Our hospitalists manage inpatient general medical services at:

Cancer Patients and Hospital Medicine

Every year in the U.S., approximately 4.7 million cancer-related hospitalizations and 1.2 million hospital discharges with cancer as the principal diagnosis occur. Hospitalization is a time of intense scrutiny and can reveal previously unknown medical, social, cultural, psychological, and spiritual concerns that often show themselves through acute illness.

Inpatient care requires consideration not only of the malignancy and its complications, but also of comorbidities (having multiple conditions) that affect quality of life in terminal illness.

Coordinating care in hospitalized patients with advanced cancer is paramount; oncology hospitalists are experts in hospital-based care processes and can efficiently organize care between a patient’s oncologist, consultants, nursing staff, social work, and case management. Coordination of care, especially with the outpatient medical oncologist, may shorten length of stay, improve efficiency, and improve patient satisfaction.

At UT Southwestern, we offer cancer patients:

Hospitalists who better understand cancer diagnoses and stay informed about current treatment options
Specialized nurses to care for cancer patients
Multidisciplinary services, including social workers, patient navigators, and oncology pharmacists
Palliative care integration for polypharmacy (the use of multiple drugs) and pain management