Service Lines
Who We Are
The Division of Hospital Medicine (DHM) is part of the Department of Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University and encompasses the Sections of Hospital Medicine at the University (Marquam Hill campus), Hillsboro Medical Center, and the Portland VA Medical Center. The University Section is further comprised of the inpatient Medicine Teaching Service (MTS), the inpatient Clinical Hospitalist Service (CHS), and the outpatient Preoperative Medicine Clinic (PMC). We also partner with various departments across OHSU.
What is a Hospitalist?
Hospital Medicine is a medical specialty dedicated to the delivery of comprehensive medical care to hospitalized patients. Practitioners of hospital medicine include physicians (“hospitalists”) and non-physician clinicians who engage in clinical care, teaching, research, and or leadership in the field of general hospital medicine. Hospitalists manage and treat a significant range of complex and comorbid disease conditions. Hospitalists typically undergo residency training in general internal medicine, general pediatrics, or family practice. A minority of hospitalists specialize in fields including neurology, obstetrics and gynecology, and oncology. For more information, please visit the Society of Hospital Medicine website.
Service Lines
The Clinical Hospitalist Service (CHS) consists of attending faculty and advanced practice providers. Learners can also elect to rotate on this service. Faculty on the CHS see patients either independently, in co-management with select services or in medical consultation to other services.
The Medicine Teaching Service, an inpatient cornerstone of OHSU’s Internal Medicine Residency Program, includes five house staff/student wards teams, each supervised by a clinician educator. Included among teaching faculty are the OHSU IM Residency Program Director, an Associate Program Director, Point-of-Care Ultrasound Director, and the IM 4th Year Clerkship Director in addition to other educational roles within the institution.
OHSU Health Hospital at Home brings hospital care to you. Our doctors, nurses and other professionals treat you and monitor you in your own home just like they would in the hospital. We give you personalized care and frequent contact with your care team, in the comfort of your own home.
The Intake Hospitalist Service (established January 1st 2021) triages all inter-hospital Medicine transfer requests for both OHSU and HMC. Our goal is to ensure that all Oregonians—as well as some patients from neighboring states and territories--have access to specialty care that may not be available to them locally. We work closely with physicians at the referring hospitals to ensure transfer patients are appropriate and safe for transfer to OHSU. This service is staffed by a number of our veteran hospitalists in the Department of Hospital Medicine.
The Procedure Service was started in 2014 in collaboration with the Internal Medicine Residency Program in order to standardize procedural training, increase procedural opportunities for residents, and improve procedural knowledge, procedural confidence, and satisfaction with regard to procedural training. Since that time, the team has expanded and currently includes, at any given time, one faculty supervisor, one resident, and one medical student. In total, there are 10 faculty members within the Division of Hospital Medicine that supervise on the Procedure Service. The service runs Monday through Friday between the hours of 8:00 am until 5:00 pm (52 weeks per year). We provide procedures for all inpatient services, including non-medicine services (eg, Family Medicine), with a total volume of around 500 procedures per year, including thoracentesis, paracentesis, and lumbar puncture. We utilize ultrasound for most procedures. There is an online curriculum that contains standardized guides, videos, supply checklists, and key articles in the field of procedural medicine.
The Division has been active in inpatient preoperative medicine since 1998, followed by the creation of the Preoperative Medicine Clinic (PMC) in 2008. We work closely with the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine and multiple surgical and procedural departments and divisions to provide care before a variety of surgeries and procedures performed at OHSU. We find the cornerstone of pre-operative care to be comprehensive patient-centered risk assessments.
Advanced Practice Providers (APPs) include physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs). APPs have been a part of the Division of Hospital Medicine since 2011, where they care for patients independently and in collaboration with physicians. APPs also precept physician assistant and nurse practitioner students on core and elective hospital medicine rotations.