Do Hospitalists' Work Schedules Affect Quality of Patient Care?

Although care continuity likely facilitates improved medical practice, there is no accepted standard for hospitalist scheduling that addresses care discontinuities for hospitalized patients and how they affect outcomes. Researchers evaluated Medicare claims data for a 3-year period on approximately 115,000 non–intensive care medical admissions in more than 200 Texas hospitals; only admissions with 3-to-6–day hospital lengths of stay with care provided by hospitalists were considered. The continuity of each hospitalist's schedule was estimated as the percentage of working days that were part of a ≥7-day block of consecutive working days in that year.

Patients who received care from hospitalists in the highest quartile of schedule continuity (…