Shining light on the hospitalist work after dark

Abstract

Hospitalists work day and night, but the workloads of each shift are anything but uniform. Evening and overnight (“after‐hours”) work is not as visible to the health system. We aimed to increase the visibility of the after‐hours cross‐cover work by implementing standardized documentation practices that also facilitated appropriate billing for hospitalist‐provided patient care. Our education session and simple electronic medical record (EMR) note template successfully increased visibility as measured by work relative value units (wRVUs) and trackable after‐hours clinical documentation. This visibility creates a foundation for future improvement work to optimize essential—but often under‐recognized—hospitalist work after‐hours.