The Society of Hospital Medicine held their annual conference this week in San Diego, California. The meeting had the largest attendance ever for SHM with over 4000 registered, including many from Duke. Nippon (Pooh) Setji, MD, was in attendance and was able to report back for us. Check out his full story and photo gallery from the event!
The first day of the SHM conference was surprisingly rainy, but that could not dampen the enthusiasm emanating from the San Diego ConventionCenter. The theme of this year’s conference was “The Year of the Hospitalist.” It has been 20 years since the term “hospitalist” was coined by Bob Wachter and the specialty is growing rapidly. The future of hospital medicine looks bright as it is well positioned with leaders in health care. The current leader of CMS and the Surgeon General are current hospitalists. The Surgeon General delivered the keynote address where he talked about the foundations for health and how hospitalists could play a future role in population and preventive health.
Presentations and an Award
Duke Hospital Medicine (past and present) was well represented in San Diego. There were posters presented by Dennis College, Poonam Sharma, Suchita Shah and myself. A former faculty member, Alyssa Stephany, and her students from Duke, took home the award for best pediatric clinical vignette. Aparna Kamath led a session titled “Instilling high value cost conscious care into daily practice.” Jon Bae led a break out session titled “Reducing inpatient mortality: a Standardized Approach to identify preventable Deaths.” I was asked to be a part of a panel discussion for questions and answers for the session, “Think Different: Addressing the Problem of High-Cost, Low Quality Care provided to High Utilizer Patients.”
Induction of New Society Fellows
Joanna Kipnes was inducted as a “Fellow” in Hospital Medicine. Jon Bae and I were inducted as “Senior Fellows” this year. Jon overly enjoyed the perks of the “exclusive” fellows lounge on site. Live-tweeting from Jon Bae @JonBae01 allowed many from Duke to follow along with the festivities.
Social Time
The weather did clear which allowed some time for socializing and enjoying southern California. Suchita Shah represented Duke well in the 5K on Tuesday morning. Jon Bae successfully completed a Hard Rock Hotel scavenger hunt taking home some nice prizes. The Duke Hospital Medicine group enjoyed a great dinner together to discuss the opportunities that awaited us all upon our return from San Diego. We also engaged in some high stakes discussion about next year’s annual meeting and strategic planning for a strong showing for Duke.
Click here for a photo gallery of the event.
Hat Tip @JonBae01 for live-tweeting and supplying many photos and comments!
Hospitalists note: the Inaugural Meeting of the Triangle Chapter of SHM takes place March 22, at Maggiano’s, RSVP TriangleSHM@gmail.com (read more)