The Tulane Pediatric Hospitalist Service opened July 1, 2007. We are very fortunate to have Dr. Matthew Keane, Dr. L. Mark Lister and Dr. Todd Washko on the full-time faculty of Tulane Pediatrics. Each has served as a Chief Resident for Tulane Pediatrics. They are skilled, knowledgeable pediatricians who, along with the most up-to-date pediatric skills, bring extensive knowledge of the Tulane Pediatrics faculty, staff and facilities to bear on the care of children and adolescents hospitalized at Tulane Medical Center.  

The hospitalists receive patients from the Tulane Pediatric Emergency Room and also accept direct referrals from community-based physicians whose patients require hospitalization. They also assist our pediatric sub-specialty faculty with the hospital care of their patients. This enables our sub-specialists to be more available for consultation and out-patient services. The continuity of care which the Tulane Pediatric Hospitalists provide is invaluable both for the patients directly and as an educational model for our pediatric residents and students. As a bonus, more faculty time is available for pediatric clinical education and research, too. 

Most recently, the hospitalist section has acted to address needs at Tulane Hospital for Children with regard to sedation for procedures; in order to ensure access to prompt, pediatric-appropriate sedation, the hospitalists have established a rotation by which one hospitalist is available on any given day to provide sedation in the pediatric clinic, on the ward, or in environments such as Interventional Radiology.   This service has been a tremendous success, with increasing usage by various subspecialty services, high satisfaction levels from patients’ families and requesting physicians, and no significant adverse events.

The hospitalist section has also moved to facilitate clinical activities of subspecialty sections, including gastroenterology, nephrology, infectious disease, endocrinology, allergy/immunology, and neurology; toward this end, the hospitalists are the primary admitting physicians for patients requiring those services, with the subspecialist acting in a concurrent-care role.  This allows the subspecialist to focus attention on outpatient clinic activities while still maintaining staff presence for each patient (in the form of the hospitalist), without diminishing subspecialists’ authority to direct the care plan.  Satisfaction with this arrangement has been high among those utilizing the service, and it has allowed members of smaller subspecialty sections to pursue research and other academic priorities important to the department’s mission.

From an educational standpoint, the hospitalists are perhaps the faculty most intimately involved in resident and student education, with supervisory interactions on both the hospital ward and in the emergency department.  This is reflected in resident and students’ evaluations, which consistently rank hospitalist attendings among the department’s best in terms of accessibility, collegiality, and investment in resident and student education.”

The hospitalist make it a priority to maintain close contact with the primary care physician throughout a child’s stay at Tulane, especially upon discharge. The Tulane Pediatric Hospitalist on-call can be reached via the Tulane Call Center (504-988-5300) or you may call them directly on the Hospitalist-on-call cell phone at 504-388-7811.