St. Rose Dominican Announces Sound Physicians Relationship

Dignity Health - St. Rose Dominican announces it will centralize its hospitalist program through an agreement with Sound Physicians, beginning in spring 2015.

Sound Physicians, a leading hospitalist organization focused on driving improvements in quality, satisfaction and financial performance of inpatient healthcare delivery, will provide hospitalist services at all three of St. Rose’s southern Nevada campuses. 

Sometimes called an ‘inpatient physician,’ a hospitalist is a physician who focuses exclusively on the care of hospitalized patients. This coverage is provided to patients who do not have a regular primary care physician or when a physician elects to have a hospitalist provide inpatient services.

Achieving top quality and length-of-stay measures is very important to St. Rose, and these measurements are highly affected by having a strong hospitalist program. The goals of the agreement with Sound Physicians includes having a hospitalist physician in-house 24 hours a day, seven days a week at each of the three St. Rose campuses, reducing emergency room congestion, decreasing a patient’s length of stay and readmission rates, and improving patient and physician satisfaction. The result of these goals will include better clinical outcomes and patient safety.

“Every day, we try to identify what our hospitals can do to make the patient experience better and more productive,” said Robert Pretzlaff, M.D., Chief Medical Officer for Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican. “Patient care and safety continue to be our highest priorities at St. Rose. We are very excited about this relationship.”

“We’re excited to partner with Dignity Health-St. Rose Dominican to support its mission of improving inpatient quality,” said Robert Bessler, M.D., CEO of Sound Physicians. “We look forward to leveraging our performance management expertise and strong physician leadership to drive improvements in quality, efficiency and satisfaction.”

A targeted start date for the Sound Physicians group is April 1, 2015, and these physicians will serve all three campuses of St. Rose – Rose de Lima, Siena, and San Martín.