The Endocrine Hospitalist: Enhancing the Quality of Diabetes Care

Abstract

The endocrine hospitalist and inpatient diabetes management team increases access to endocrinology consultations and improves glycemic control and quality metrics such as length of stay and hospital readmission. Enhanced glycemic care is needed in both academic and community hospital settings. Endocrine fellowship programs should implement endocrine hospitalist rotations with emphasis on training endocrine fellows to deliver fast-paced inpatient endocrine care. Entrepreneurship, innovation, and a “start-up” culture within the field of Endocrinology should be encouraged and supported by healthcare systems.

Hospital Diabetes Meeting 2022

“…Endocrine hospitalists are endocrinology-trained physicians or advanced practice providers who are focused exclusively on inpatient endocrine management. 54 Given the shortage of endocrinologists nationally, endocrine hospitalists bring value to hospitals by providing timely and expert endocrine consultative care, while also working to improve systems barriers that may result in suboptimal endocrine and diabetes care. In collaboration with pharmacists, nurses, dieticians, diabetes care and education specialists, and advanced practice providers, the endocrine hospitalist can enhance the quality of inpatient diabetes care by reducing rates of both hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia, decreasing length of stay, and reducing readmissions.…”

“…56,59 Endocrine hospitalists can play an important leadership role in reviewing internal glucometric data, benchmarking against other hospitals, and oversight of reportable glycemic metrics. 54,55,60 Endocrine hospitalists improve clinical outcomes and secure a return on investment for hospitals. 59 Pharmacy Programs to Improve Quality A pharmacist-led collaborative initiative was implemented at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center to address high rates of dysglycemia among patients treated with subcutaneous insulin in the ICU.…”

“…56,59 Endocrine hospitalists can play an important leadership role in reviewing internal glucometric data, benchmarking against other hospitals, and oversight of reportable glycemic metrics. 54,55,60 Endocrine hospitalists improve clinical outcomes and secure a return on investment for hospitals. 59…”

Diabetes-related bias in electronic health records and International Classification of Diseases.

“… 18 I am a diabetes expert and I lead a group of Endocrine Hospitalists at Johns Hopkins Medicine who manage thousands of people living with diabetes each year. 4 , 19 …”

“…I see a dozen patients a day who live and struggle with diabetes. 4 I remember when one of my patients told me a few years ago: “Well, I am a diabetic . What do you want from me?” I responded: “You live with diabetes.…”