What is the single best piece of advice you received when starting out as a hospitalist for the first time?

Billing is just a part of routine practice. While everyone is scared of overbilling, underbilling is also a big problem.

During my training, I had very little exposure to billing and coding. During my hospitalist onboarding, we had a couple of sessions on billing, but I was anxious when I submitted my very first bill.

As long as our documentation supports the services we provide and we select the corresponding billing codes, it should all be good.

This question makes me reflect in many ways. Certainly, the logistics, the team dynamics, the medical complexity, and the social determinants impact day-to-day aspects of hospital medicine.

The best advice I received towards the end of training, which has paid dividends, is to tell yourself you have time - time to do the chart review needed to understand what’s happening. Time to review that CT chest from 2 years ago. Time to pull up a chair at a patient’s bedside and take history. Time to do on...