[Hospital stay in internal medicine hospitalist function]

hospitalists are physicians who focus all of their clinical efforts on the management of hospital inpatients.

to evaluate if the presence of hospitalist physicians is associated with a shorter length of stay (LOS).

hospitalized patients in the Internal Medicine Department of two second care government hospitals. LOS was defined as ≥ 9 days and hospital admission was classified as medical and nonmedical.

the principal cause of longer nonmedical LOS was delay of medical or surgical procedures. The hospital with hospitalists had significantly lower frequency of LOS (26 % versus 34 %, p = 0.05), higher number of weekends discharges (35 % versus 21 %, p = 0.01) and minor days of hospitalization 6.3 ± 5.2 versus 8.0 ± 6.2, p = 0.002) compared to the hospital without hospitalists.

the hospitalist model tends toward more cost-effective patient care.