Hospital medicine is the fastest growing medical specialty in the history of American medicine. That is despite the fact that, since the term “hospitalist” was first coined in 1996, these physicians have often been defined in terms of their relationship to other physicians - i.e., the one managing patients for primary care doctors in order to 1) free up the primary care doctor’s time, 2) reduce the primary care doctor’s stress in running between the clinic and the hospital, 3) take certain less desirable tasks off the primary care doctor’s plate, etc.