GOUVERNEUR -- Gouverneur Hospital (GH) has launched a round-the-clock hospitalist physician service in partnership with Delphi Healthcare “as next step in assuring quality medical care for those in the community.”

Hospitalists are medical specialists in the care of hospitalized patients. They coordinate care with the patient’s primary care provider.

GH’s service will have local oversight and involvement from long-standing community providers Dr. George Dodds, who will act as medical director, and Dr. Edward Reason. Delphi Healthcare physicians began providing patient care July 18.

“Studies have shown that hospitalist programs provide individualized care for inpatients and can improve the quality of care to all patients overall because doctors aren’t being pulled away from the office and there is smoother coordination along the continuum of care from office, to hospital, to home,” added CEO David Bender.

“As early as 2002, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that hospitalist programs improve the patient experience, patient outcomes, and also engage all medical providers in continuous quality improvements,” he said. “A follow-up 2016 review in the New England Journal of Medicine found that hospitalist programs are at the forefront of innovation in addressing high-risk patients, such as those who need ongoing care to avoid readmission,” added CEO Bender.

“Our community’s needs center on high-risk conditions for avoidable ER visits and readmissions; these conditions include heart failure and diabetes. A hospitalist program can work with other medical and nursing leaders to reduce these risks for the population as a whole,” he said.

Bender emphasized that quality is the first concern of the hospital, and that robust, sustainable practice models can assist the community to recruit new physicians as well as retain the exceptional physicians currently practicing in Gouverneur. Engaging an expert medicals staff is the key to sustaining quality services, he noted.

“Fewer than 10% of graduating doctors choose family practice these days,” said CEO Bender. “And an even smaller proportion of those doctors choose to practice in rural areas like ours,” he said. “To recruit providers and retain the excellent community providers we now have, a hospitalist service is essential.”

Delphi Healthcare is a physician-owned company that was founded in 1995. The company started by providing emergency medicine physician services throughout the Rochester and Finger Lakes Region of New York. Over time, Delphi’s hospital partners developed hospitalist services to meet the needs of a rapidly changing environment.

Delphi physician providers become credentialed members of the GH medical staff, meeting all the same rigorous criteria for any regular member of the staff, with the same requirements for attending quality assurance meetings and contributing to initiatives designed to improve the health of the population.

Delphi Healthcare individualizes each hospitalist program to meet the unique needs of each community it serves, without compromising quality standards in force throughout its operations, according to Delphi Healthcare and GH officials.

For more information about inpatient or emergency care at Gouverneur Hospital, interested individuals may visit www.gvnrhospital.org.