Hi, my name is Dr. Jeff Millard and I'm a hospitalist here at Miami Valley Hospital. A hospitalist is a person who specializes in hospital medicine and we take care of patients just here in the hospital, not in the office. For the orthopedists, we take care of the medical problems for the orthopedic patients when they are here. We have a special clinic that clears the patients prior to having surgery and then we see them right away in the recovery room after their surgery. We follow them every day for any medical problems they have and work in collaboration with the orthopedic surgeon.
We keep in touch with the orthopedic surgeon by the chart, where we document everything that we do and if there are any specific issues, we talk to them in person, either here at the hospital or over the phone.
As a hospitalist, we admit all the hip fracture patients here at Miami Valley Hospital and then coordinate their care with the orthopedist and thus, we would also do the discharge. For the rest of the orthopedic patients, we usually have the orthopedist do the admission and then we take care of their medical issues and the orthopedist does the discharge.