The Hospital Medicine Department at St. Vincent’s Medical Center is dedicated to caring for acutely ill, hospitalized patients.
If you or a loved one are hospitalized at St. Vincent's, Hospital Medicine is able to provide participation in your care by our Hospitalist Service team of experienced St. Vincent’s physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
Together, we integrate the core values of the medical center: service to the poor, reverence, integrity, wisdom, creativity and dedication to their daily practice.
We're Here When You Need Us
Hospitalists are Board Certified physicians (Internal Medicine and Family Medicine) and mid-level providers dedicated to the acute care of hospitalized medical patients. Through our participation with St. Vincent's Medical Center's Graduate Medical Education Internal Medicine Residency Programs, we foster education in the field of hospital medicine and research methods for improving the quality of inpatient care. In so doing, we educate and mentor the next generation of quality care physicians.
Day or Night
We are available 24/7 to care for patients referred to our service from various sources:
- At the specific request of their primary care provider
- Unassigned patients presenting to the Emergency Department who require hospitalization
- As Internal Medicine consultant for various sub-specialty providers
These highly skilled medical professionals collaborate with your primary care physician (PCP) and other specialists to ensure you of seamless, superior and compassionate care within the safest possible environment. As members of St. Vincent’s staff, our hospitalists are committed to our patients and generally do not participate in a private practice.
The Hospitalist Service at St. Vincent’s is available to patients whose primary care provider or specialist has requested its services, or to patients who present at the Emergency Department and require hospitalization.
Hospitalist Services
Services provided by our St. Vincent’s Hospital Medicine Hospitalist Services team include:
- Providing acute internal medical care to patients 24 hours a day, seven days a week as requested by the patient’s primary care physician (PCP) or specialist, or by
- Emergency Department (ED) physicians when an ED patient is admitted to the hospital and has no PCP
- Providing internal medical consults to ED physicians upon their request
- Referring patients to a primary care physician upon discharge if they do not have one
- Providing internal medicine consults to various subspecialty providers
- Fostering continued excellence in medical practice as clinical educators and faculty members of St. Vincent’s Medical Education Department
- Contributing to the delivery of positive outcomes by implementing quality hospital initiatives that address and improve patient safety, readmission rates and hospital efficiency
- Supervising medical students and residents
- Participating on St. Vincent’s Stroke Taskforce and Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) Taskforce and the hospital’s IT committee
Quality and Safety
Our vision fosters the physician-patient relationship while delivering quantifiable improvement in care outcomes. We define quality as making the best practice the common practice. We are active members in the hospital’s initiatives of creating a culture of safety and development of personal safety strategies.
Members of the hospitalist team have various background and interests and are involved in many hospital-wide projects:
Patient experience / relationship-based care
- Patient safety
- Stroke taskforce
- Glycemic control
- CHF collaborative taskforce
- IT committee
- Readmission reduction
- ED throughout
Hospitalists serve as effective, essential healthcare providers in all areas of the hospital where patients expect and deserve absolute safety and the highest quality of care.
St. Vincent's Hospitalists, Staff & Clinical Educations (Find a Hospitalist)
St. Vincent's Medical Center Hospitalists include full-time and part-time Physicians, as well as Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants. In addition, the hospitalist team has a number of clinical educators that work closely with Internal Medicine residents within the Medical Education program.
To speak with a St. Vincent's Hospitalist, please call 203.576.5718
Clinical Educators
The hospitalist team has a number of clinical educators with strong skills in inpatient evidence-based Internal Medicine teaching and patient care, multi-disciplinary team leadership, and optimization of resource utilization.
St. Vincent's Clinical Educators supervise Internal Medicine residents and have a strong interest in scholarly activity. The Clinical Educators are faculty members of the Medical Education Department. Learn more about St. Vincent's Medical Education and clinical opportunities.
Residents: Please visit the Society of Hospital Medicine website for more information on becoming a hospitalist.
Hospital Medicine and Hospital FAQs
Q. What are the qualifications of a hospitalist?
A. Each St. Vincent’s hospitalist is board certified as an internal medicine or family medicine physician. As part of a team available on a 24/7 basis, our hospitalists provide expert medical care to hospitalized patients or consulting services to the Emergency Department (ED) when ED physicians request it.
Our hospitalists are typically able to coordinate effectively in situations that require a multi-disciplinary approach as, for instance, when a hospitalized patient has various medical conditions.
Q. Is every member of a Hospitalist Service team a physician?
A. Hospitalists are always physicians, but there are other members of the hospitalist team. At St. Vincent’s, the team includes skilled, experienced nurse practitioners and physician assistants, each qualified and licensed to perform specific medical services.
Q. What’s the advantage of a hospitalist team?
A. Your care and condition as an inpatient at St. Vincent’s is constantly monitored by our skilled and dedicated nurses. The hospitalist team - which is already familiar with you as a patient - stays in close communication with these nurses and is able to respond within moments of a sudden or serious situation when your primary care doctor (PCP) or specialist may not be available. Under this arrangement with our hospitalist team, your physicians, family and you are assured that immediate physician response occurs as soon as it is required.
Q. Do hospitalists perform other functions besides patient care?
A. The hospitalist team at St. Vincent’s includes clinical educators with strong skills in internal-medicine patient care as well as in multidisciplinary medical leadership and the optimization of hospital resource utilization.
Hospitalists who are members of St. Vincent’s Department of Medical Education supervise medical students and residents and have a wide range of scholarly interest. They are frequently involved in implementing and participating in hospital initiatives.