In 2009, Central Maine Hospitalists (CMH), in collaboration with Central Maine Family Medicine Residency (CMFMR), began offering a one-year fellowship for a family medicine or internal medicine graduate interested in pursuing a career as a hospitalist. Based on our highly successful initial experience with this program, in 2012 we expanded the program to include up to two fellows per academic year. We hope you will contact us if you are interested in focusing your career on inpatient medicine.
CMH was established with five experienced physicians in 2004 and has now grown to over thirty board-certified physicians and associate professional staff (NP/PA). We care for over 50% of the inpatient population at Central Maine Medical Center (CMMC), a 250-bed community teaching hospital as well as provide care at our affiliated critical access hospitals. All members of CMH are actively involved in a number of hospital processes including: division and group leadership, quality improvement, guideline development and implementation, patient safety, medical education, palliative care and information technology. We are also involved in the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM), including Fellows and Senior Fellows of Hospital Medicine. Several of our members have earned a Recognition of Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine (RFPHM). Our group members have been active in and presented at SHM local chapter meetings, as well as national SHM forum leadership, committee membership and leadership. All members of the group are committed teachers involved in educating the hospitalist fellows, residents, medical and pharmacy students.
CMFMR has been educating family physicians since 1978. We provide care and training to diverse populations and our graduates are regularly hired into the hospital system. The opportunity to partner with the hospitalist group builds on our reputation for excellent inpatient training and our flexibility in establishing programs to meet student and resident needs. The department of family medicine has established a reputation for advanced thinking in organizing for the provision of care and has become a research setting for the rest of the outpatient practices at CMMC. Modeling excellence in interdepartmental cooperation, CMH and CMFMR are exceptionally well-suited to educating Hospitalists Trained in Family Medicine (HTFM).
Dr. Stein and our program were recently featured in The Hospitalist, August 2019: “We rely heavily on the Core Competencies in Hospital Medicine developed by SHM, which emphasize clinical conditions, medical procedures, and health care systems. Gaining fluency in the latter is really what makes hospital medicine unique,” Dr. Stein said. “Often residency graduates seeking work in hospital medicine are insufficiently prepared for hospital billing and coding, enacting safe transitions of care, providing palliative care, and understanding how to impact their health care systems for quality improvement, patient safety and the like,” he added.
Dr. Stein said his fellowship does not mean just being a poorly paid hospitalist for a year. “The fellows are clearly trainees, getting the full benefit of our supervision and supplemental training focused on enhanced clinical and procedural exposure, but also on academics, quality improvement, leadership, and efficiency,” he said. “All of our fellows join SHM, go to the Annual Conference, propose case studies, do longitudinal quality or safety projects, and learn the other aspects of hospital medicine not well-taught in residency. We train them to be highly functional hospitalists right out of the gate.”