The potential size of the hospitalist workforce in the United States

PURPOSE: In the United States, there are currently 1,000 to 2,000 physician s who specialize in inpatient hospital care. The number of such hospitalist s appears to be growing rapidly, but the ultimate size of the hospitalist w orkforce is not known. METHODS: We obtained workload data from 365 practicing hospitalists who com pleted a survey by the National Association of Inpatient Physicians. We the n estimated the number of potential hospitalists, based on published nation al hospital census data. We assumed that hospitalists would care for all me dical inpatients, but only at hospitals large enough to require greater tha n or equal to 3 hospitalists. We also made estimates based on the primary c are physician referral base and international benchmarks. We estimated hosp italists' primary care referral base from telephone interviews with key inf ormants. Official sources in England and Germany provided international wor kforce data. RESULTS: Hospitalists reported an average workload of 13 inpatients. To cov er all adult medical inpatients in the United States, we estimate a potenti al workforce of 19,000 hospitalists. Sensitivity analysis yielded 10,000 to 30,000 hospitalists. Our alternative models yielded estimates within this same range. CONCLUSIONS: The future hospitalist workforce is potentially quite large. T his finding highlights the need to evaluate the economic and clinical outco mes of hospitalist systems. (C) 1999 by Excerpta Medica, Inc.