Valley Medical Center recently launched the first Obstetrics Hospitalist Program in the greater Seattle and Tacoma area. This new service ensures that a board-certified physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology is in the hospital and immediately available at all times – 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The program also ensures that every woman admitted for emergency obstetric or gynecologic care is examined and evaluated by a physician. The hospitalists are also immediately available for ongoing medical needs or unexpected emergencies of hospitalized patients.
To support this initiative, VMC is working with OB Hospitalist Group, a national physician group that specializes in caring for the obstetrical and gynecological needs of women.
Hospitalists are physicians who specialize in caring for hospitalized patients. The current hospitalists on staff at VMC are board-certified or board-eligible internal medicine physicians.
Under the new Obstetrics Hospitalist Program, specialized physician hospitalists will provide a number of important services including:
• Caring for patients transferred to VMC from outlying areas who require high-risk pregnancy care
• Providing emergency services for all obstetrics patients, including those with a private physician, until that physician’s arrival
• Assisting private physicians with cesarean-section deliveries
• Stabilizing patients in emergency situations on the obstetrics/gynecology floors until the patient’s attending physician arrives
• Providing obstetric care for patients with no local obstetrician.
More than 4,000 babies were delivered at Valley Medical Center’s Birth Center in 2008.
Hospital medicine is the fastest growing medical specialty in the United States, according to the Society of Hospital Medicine. More than 20,000 hospitalists practice in the United States. On any given day at Valley Medical Center, the care of approximately 75 patients is directed by, or provided in consultation with a hospitalist physician. That number is expected to grow significantly with the new Obstetrics Hospitalist Program.
For more information on programs and services at Valley Medical Center, visit www.valleymed.org. For healthcare referrals, contact Health Connection at 863.291.6705 or 1.800.416.6705.
