Updating the core competencies in hospital medicine—2017 revision: Introduction and methodology

In 2006, the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) first published The Core Competencies in Hospital Medicine: A Framework for Curricular Development (henceforth described as the Core Competencies) to help define the role and expectations of hospitalists.^1,2 The Core Competencies provided a framework for evaluating clinical skills and professional expertise within a rapidly developing field and highlighted opportunities for growth. Since the initial development and publication of the Core Competencies, changes in the healthcare landscape and hospitalist practice environment have prompted this revision.

Over the past decade, the field of hospital medicine has experienced exponential growth. In 2005, just over 16,000 hospitalists were practicing in the United States. By 2015, that number had increased to an estimated 44,000 hospitalists, accounting for approximately 6% of the physician workforce.³ Hospitalists have expanded the scope of hospital medicine in many ways. In their roles, hospitalists lead and participate in hospital-based care models that emphasize interprofessional collaboration and a focus on the delivery of high-quality and cost-effective care across a variety of clinical domains (eg, the Choosing Wisely initiative).⁴ They are also engaged in patient safety and quality initiatives that are increasingly being used as benchmarks to rate hospitals and as factors for hospital payment (eg, Hospital Inpatient Value-Based Purchasing Program).⁵ In fact, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) created a Focused Practice in Hospital Medicine Maintenance of Certification program in response to the growing number of internists choosing to concentrate their practice in the hospital setting. This decision by the ABIM underscores the value that hospitalists bring to improving patient care in the hospital setting. The ABIM also recognizes the Core Competencies as a curricular framework for a focused practice in hospital medicine.⁶

Changes within the educational environment have demanded attentive and active participation by many hospitalists. For example, in 2012, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) introduced the Milestones Project, a new outcomes-based framework designed to more effectively assess learner performance across the 6 core competencies.⁷ These milestones assessments create intentional opportunities to guide the development of physicians during their training, including in the inpatient environments in which hospitalists practice. Where applicable, existing Core Competencies learning objectives were compared with external sources such as the individual ACGME performance milestones for this revision.

The Core Competencies focus on adult hospital medicine. The Pediatric Hospital Medicine Core Competencies are published separately.⁸ Importantly, the Core Competencies document is not intended to define an absolute set of clinical, procedural, or system-based topics described in textbooks or used by graduate medical education training programs. It does not define or limit the scope of the practice of hospital medicine. Rather, the Core Competencies serve as measurable learning objectives that encourage teaching faculty, practicing hospitalists, and administrators to develop individual skill sets and programs to improve patient care contextualized to the needs of an individual, care setting, or institution. To permit this flexibility, individual chapter-specific objectives are intentionally general in nature. Finally, the Core Competencies document is not a set of practice guidelines, nor does it offer any representation of a “standard of care.” Readers are encouraged to explore the article by McKean et al.⁹ to review examples of application of the Core Competencies and suggestions for curricular development.

The purpose of this article is to describe the criteria for inclusion of new chapters in the Core Competencies and the methodology of the review and revision process. It outlines the process of initial review and editing of the existing chapters; needs assessment for new topics; new chapter production; and the process of review and revision of individual chapters to create the complete document. The revised Core Competencies document is available online at https://www.journalofhospitalmedicine.com/jhospmed/issue/134981/journal-hospital-medicine-124-suppl-1.

In 2012, the Society of Hospital Medicine (SHM) Education Committee created a Core Competencies Task Force (CCTF) in response to the SHM Board of Directors’ charge that it review and update the initial Core Competencies document. The CCTF comprised of 5 physician SHM Education Committee members and one SHM staff representative. CCTF membership included hospitalists with an interest and familiarity with the Core Competencies document. The SHM Education Committee nominated the CCTF chair, who determined the optimal size, qualifications, and composition of the task force with approval from the Committee. The CCTF communicated through frequent conference calls and via e-mail correspondence to conduct an initial review of the existing chapters and to perform a needs assessment for new topics.