This book is evidence-based and takes into account the modern managed care model in which the current hospitalist practices. The Hospitalist Physician is a relatively new concept within modern healthcare. As this new field evolves, so too will the educational needs of internists who have chosen to practice this discipline. This work is aimed squarely at addressing this need. Internal medicine residency programs in this country strive to equip new grads with a comprehensive set of skills for dealing with both inpatient and outpatient care. However, there remain practice management and workflow nuances that separate the traditional internist from the acute inpatient care physician, or hospitalist. These are the key areas that this work hopes to shed light upon, in addition to highlighting some of the intriguing procedural and critical care elements that hospitalist need to be strong in. It is hoped that this text will enable a physician to respond to the patients needs in real time, providing a service which was not possible for busy primary care doctors to perform in the recent past. This book will be used as an in-the-field guide for new hospitalists, focusing on two groups of readers: the new graduate from residency and the office-based internist that wishes to retrain and certify as a hospitalist physician. It is a practical text, with an illustrated procedures section, intended for use as a reference for hospital-based procedures. The Hospitalist will serve as a pocket guide for those intending to obtain rapid information on practice management principles unique to a hospitalist physician.