With the introduction of its new hospitalist program, Muskogee Regional Medical Center joins the ranks of Tahlequah City Hospital and Wagoner Community Hospital, which already have such programs.

Dr. Berry Winn with MRMC said a hospitalist is a doctor who works exclusively inside the hospital. This helps with logistical problems for doctors who are busy in their private practice but have a patient who is hospitalized.

“For example, if there is an elderly patient with a broken bone, his or her orthopedist can consult with the hospitalist to see if the patient is ready for surgery and it is safe,” he said.

With the hospitalist in more frequent contact with the patients, their information is crucial for the patient’s primary care provider, who can’t make frequent trips to the hospital to the check on the patient.

Winn said the program began in mid-November and has four full-time hospitalists and two part-time. He plans to add two full-time hospitalists in January. The doctors are provided to the hospital through Winn Associates.

“Patients are also admitted and discharged more quickly,” he said. “Without a hospitalist, you might have a chest x-ray at 9 a.m., and your primary care provider may not be able to look at it until 6 p.m.”

Winn said the hospitalist is focused entirely on making the patient’s hospital stay as effective and efficient as possible. The program also makes primary care providers available in their offices more often.

“It is also a big recruiting tool,” he said. “Physicians of my generation expected to work all the time. But younger doctors are looking more for a place where they can go home at 5 p.m. The hospitalist program makes Muskogee more attractive to new doctors.”

Dr. Jennifer Mathis, a hospitalist at Tahlequah City Hospital, said a hospitalized patient’s primary care provider may be torn between seeing patients in his office and seeing his patients who are hospitalized.



“If someone has an emergency in the hospital, we’re right here all day long,” she said. “It’s really a safety issue and a specialty issue. We deal with sicker patients every day. That’s all we do, and we have a really good focus on hospitalized patients.”

Mathis, 31, said since they work only in the hospital, they have a good relationship with the other physicians and the nursing staff.

“If you’re a family physician who sees patients both inpatient and outpatient, that physician is usually getting up at 5 in the morning, then checking on their inpatients in the hospital, then going to their office to see patients all day long, and they may or may not come back in the evening,” she said. “That physician gets tired. If you’ve seen 35 or 40 patients a day, you’re exhausted.”

Mathis said, as a hospitalist, she can be there if the family drops by with questions about how their loved one is doing.

“Some of the patients may be nervous and say that their home doctor isn’t seeing them, but we explain to them that we’re specialists, and we’re following them every single day,” she said. “It’s really kind of an education process. This is the new model of medicine.”



Reach Keith Purtell at 918-684-2925 or Click Here to Send Email