Why won’t my primary care doctor oversee my hospital care?

Increasingly, hospitalist doctors (who are present in the hospital 24 hours a day) take care of hospitalized patients, with advice from the patients’ primary care doctors. This helps solve the dilemma of primary care doctors needing to be in two places at once—in a hospital with some patients and in an office with others. It’s not a perfect solution: hospitalists often don’t know the patients they’re caring for, and they are unfamiliar with patients’ extensive medical records. But ultimately, the increasing number of hospitalists is probably improving the quality and efficiency of hospital care.