Across the United States, both community hospitals and large medical institutions are struggling with a shared crisis: staffing shortages that disrupt patient care, strain financial stability, and overload critical healthcare infrastructure. For smaller hospitals, the challenge has been to retain specialty physicians, which leads to losing local patients. Meanwhile, larger institutions face an unsustainable burden, with overcrowded beds and worsening patient-to-staff ratios.
According to the American Medical Association, if current trends continue, the US could face a shortage of 37,800 to 124,000 physicians in the coming years. Hospital medicine physicians are now in such high demand that conventional staffing models are struggling to keep pace. At the same time, hospital bed occupancies are projected to skyrocket to about 85% by 2032: a true bed shortage.
Even though hospitalist staffing has become common, most staffing agencies focus merely on filling empty clinical slots. Their solutions, though profitable, are often temporary, leaving hospitals with lingering inefficiencies such as scheduling, bottlenecks, and low staff morale. "Even the best hospital chief of staff can only do so much with an inherently flawed staffing system," notes Dr. David Rosen, co-founder of Open Source M.D. (OSMD).
Recognizing these shortcomings, OSMD has come up with an innovative model that provides healthcare providers with the flexibility to access high-quality, specialized talent easily without the exorbitant costs associated with recruitment or temporary locum tenens fees.
For instance, at Vista Health System, OSMD's solution is already bearing fruit. OSMD has enabled the hospital to grow its services in hospitalist medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and cardiology. This strategic move secures the hospital's ability to manage its own referrals and ensures that patients remain within the community for care, avoiding long drives to distant facilities.
For larger institutions, the stakes are equally high. With hospitals inundated by patients transferred from smaller facilities, the pressure on bed capacity is intensifying. "When community hospitals send patients to bigger campuses, those systems end up with sicker patients who require more complex and higher-cost procedures," explains Dr. Keates, co-founder. OSMD's approach creates a 'pressure valve' effect: by enhancing services at the community level, hospitals can reserve their resources for truly high-acuity cases.
In fact, OSMD exemplifies this balanced approach by creating a strategic partnership between Novant Health and Randolph Hospital in Asheboro. The collaboration allows for an interventional cardiology program to be deployed at Randolph Hospital, enabling community patients to receive appropriate care locally and making sure that Novant's larger hospital in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, maintains the capacity to handle the most complex procedures.
The dual-pronged strategy spearheaded by OSMD is proving to be transformative. For community hospitals, the benefits are twofold. While patients are able to receive specialized care close to home, the hospitals can also safeguard their market share and service lines. On the other hand, larger institutions are better positioned to manage their bed occupancy by directing only those patients who truly require advanced care to their facilities. As Dr. Rosen states, "Our approach allows a community hospital (with not a lot of resources) to partner with a larger facility in a unique way to allow both hospitals to grow their own service lines."
This reimagined staffing model directly tackles inefficiencies that have plagued hospitals for decades. By aligning the right procedure types with the right setting, OSMD not only improves clinical outcomes but also enhances operational efficiencies and staff morale. "We're bringing a solution to the table that gives hospitals the top-end, highest-paying procedures in the local setting while relieving larger hospitals from the burden of unnecessary transfers," says Dr. Keates.
Dr. Mark Mitchell, Physician Director at Novant Health Heart and Vascular Institute, North Carolina Triad Region, echoes how this hospitalist staffing model has benefited them: "David Rosen and the team at Open Source have developed a novel approach to physician staffing for hospitals. Their model has been welcomed by both hospital systems and physicians. For hospitals that are in need of staffing, Open Source should be strongly considered."
Truly, Open Source M.D., through its forward-thinking model, is ensuring that patients receive the right care in the right place at the right time.
