Association of part-time clinical work of hospitalists with efficiency and quality of care on medical wards: a retrospective study

Background Physicians are increasingly interested in part-time employment. However, the impact of part-time work on efficiency and quality of care of inpatients is unknown. Objectives To investigate the association between part-time clinical work of hospitalists in General Internal Medicine (GIM) and resource utilisation and short-term patient outcomes. Design Retrospective study. Setting GIM wards of 3 Swiss teaching hospitals. Participants Each inpatient was categorised as having received care mainly (>50%) by part-time or full-time hospitalists. Part-time clinical work was defined as employment of <100% as a clinician. We included 3557 cases cared for mainly by part-time and 4973 by full-time physicians. Primary and secondary outcome measures Primary outcome was length of hospital stay, secondary outcomes included 30-day readmission, in-hospital mortality, hospitalisation cost and time to completion of the discharge letter. We assessed the association between both groups and outcomes using generalised estimating equations, clustering for individual patients and adjusting for patient and hospitalist characteristics. Results There was no statistically relevant difference in length of stay in cases cared for mainly by part-time (mean 7.3 days, 95% CI 7.1 to 7.6) compared with full-time hospitalists (mean 7.6 days, 95% CI 7.3 to 7.8; p=0.18). Time to completion of the discharge letter was longer in the part-time (mean 11.4 days, 95% CI 11.0 to 11.8) versus full-time group (mean 10.9 days, 95% CI 10.6 to 11.2, p=0.049). There was no statistically significant difference between groups for the other outcomes. Conclusion We found no evidence that part-time clinical work of hospitalists negatively affects resource utilisation and short-term patient outcomes compared with full-time work.