The Laryngology Hospitalist

The traditional pattern of medical practice is a combination of outpatient and inpatient care. There has been a recent trend for many specialties to separate this care, concentrating on only one of these spheres. A clinician caring only for inpatients is a Hospitalist. The care pattern for airway and swallowing disease adopted at the University of Maryland Hospital is in the form of the laryngology hospitalist. This new surgical specialty is a hybrid of an airway surgery subspecialist and a pure hospitalist. It offers an array of advantages to patients and colleague clinicians. One advantage is that of ubiquitous availability, which offers obvious safety benefits to patients with airway patency problems. Other advantages include the potential for consistent in-depth collaboration with other clinicians such as emergency room physicians, intensivists, neurologists/neurosurgeons, pulmonologists, gastroenterologists, speech and language pathologists, and radiologists. Financial benefits to the clinician include a more favorable ratio of operative disease versus total patient contacts. Benefits to third-party payers include the more efficient and timely delivery of care in the context of an inpatient stay.