The Section of Hospital Medicine provides two distinct services, general medical care on the long term acute care hospital (LTACH) floor and medical consultation for patients admitted on the acute rehabilitation services, in concert with Good Shepherd Penn Partners, located in the Rittenhouse section of Philadelphia. Our services at this site began in 2013 with full integration in 2014.
Patients on the LTACH service typically have challenging dispositions and guarded prognoses. Admission diagnoses range from respiratory failure with ventilator dependence, pre/post-transplant, patients requiring LVADs and other very medically complex diagnoses. Our hospitalists on the LTACH serve as the attending of record and work in collaboration with and with the support of multiple disciplines. This service continues to evolve and provide active involvement in quality improvement and patient safety efforts. These efforts have resulted in a robust transitions of care protocol, which involves a multidisciplinary effort. The hospitalists also serve as the designated code/rapid response leaders and respond to every such event at GSPP.
In addition to the service on the LTACH, our group provides medicine consultation and comanagement to the Penn Institute of Rehab Medicine (PIRM). The PIRM is an acute rehabilitation facility that provides intensive therapy for a wide range of patients including those who have suffered debilitating brain or spinal cord injury as well as post-transplantation or LVAD patients. Their hospital stays may be complicated by a multitude of other comorbidities. Hospitalists are also involved in the didactic curriculum of the Physical Medicine and Rehab residents.