The Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (SNUBH) said Thursday it has found that introducing the “Acute Medical Unit” (AMU) and placing hospitalists there reduces patients’ stay in the hospital.

A hospitalist is a physician whose primary professional focus is the general medical care of hospitalized patients. An acute medical unit is a ward equipped to deal exclusively with patients transferred from the emergency department for rapid medical assessment and treatment.

An SNUBH team led by Professors Jang Hak-chul, Ohn Jung-hun and Kim Nak-hyun of the department of internal medicine compared the hospitalization period of 19,450 patients admitted to the SNUBH hospital through its emergency room, from January 2014 to September 2016. The team then analyzed the differences before and after implementing the hospitalist and acute medical unit system.

As a result, the hospitalization period, which averaged around 10 days before the introduction of the specialization system, decreased to 9.1 days after the implementation. The shorter duration of hospitalization represents the hospital’s high quality of care as it implies that patient received proper care in time. The quick discharge of patients allowed the hospital to admit additional patients.

The research also showed that the duration of patients, who suffered from acute internal medical illnesses, staying in the emergency room decreased by more than 40 percent from 17.1 hours to 10.2 hours.

“The pilot project of the hospital specialization system implemented by the Ministry of Health and Welfare confirmed that there is objective evidence that the quality of the overall treatment improves by reducing the period of stay,” Professor Jang said.

The hospital plans to take the lead in establishing the advanced system by conducting follow-up studies on how the hospitalist system affects the mortality rate, complication rate, re-admission rate and satisfaction of patients and medical staff, he added.

The results of the study were published in Journal of Korean Medical Science, one of Korea’s top authoritative journals in medical science.

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