FAQs

Yes. The mission of the telecommunications department is to support the overall mission of Baltimore Washington Medical Center. It is our desire to achieve excellence in call processing, to disseminate accurate information to our customers and to provide dedicated public service to our patients and their families.

In addition to being the single point of access to all Baltimore Washington Medical Center services, we also offer telephone answering services to physicians practicing here at an affordable rate. We use state-of-the-art equipment to answer every telecommunication need.

Our answering service includes:

• Service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and all holidays
• Skilled telemessaging specialists
• Experienced management on-call 24 hours a day
• Alphanumeric pagers and cell phones at discounted rates

Cell phone and/or pager service can also be provided without participating in the answering service.

If you are interested in additional information concerning our physician's answering service please contact:
Janice Seay
Manager, Telecommunications
410-787-6738

The CME Committee offers many educational activities. These activities serve to maintain, develop, or increase the knowledge, skills and professional performance and relationships that a physician uses to provide services for a patient, the public or the profession.

For more information regarding a schedule of CME credit activities, or if you would like to sponsor a CME event at Baltimore Washington Medical Center, please contact Thelma Askew, CME Coordinator, at 410-787-4113.

• Medical Matters - quarterly physician newsletter
• Health Fairs/Screenings - Throughout the year, a multitude of events are held throughout the community that physicians may participate in.
• Lectures - BWMC hosts lectures for community members on certain health topics. These lectures are given by a physician in the specialty being discussed.

For additional information, please contact the Marketing and Communications Department at 410-787-4367.

Contact the hospital's Medical Staff Services Department at 410-787-4525 to schedule a tour.

Yes. Due to changes in the health care delivery system, Baltimore Washington Medical Center understands that it is taxing for the primary care physician to provide efficient medical care to adult and pediatric inpatients alike while practicing in a busy outpatient office. Many physicians have patients admitted to more than one hospital, in addition to numerous chronic care facilities, further hindering their abilities to cover inpatients.

With this understanding, Baltimore Washington Medical Center renewed its commitment to improve the efficiency of inpatient care, as well as patient satisfaction, by supporting the development of the hospital based "inpatient team." The goal of the inpatient team is to provide high-quality, efficient care for patients requiring hospitalization.
 
Program Overview
The program allows primary care physicians (PCPs) to subscribe to the inpatient team to manage all of their patients admitted to Baltimore Washington Medical Center. The team is comprised of three internal medicine physicians and two critical care certified nurse practitioners who only treat hospitalized patients. An up-to-date roster of the subscribing PCPs can be accessed by the team physicians as well as the emergency department via Baltimore Washington Medical Center's intranet.

The team providers dictate admission history and physicals, inpatient consultations, as well as discharge summaries. Baltimore Washington Medical Center has an auto fax feature that allows for all dictations to be faxed to the PCP at time of transcription. A physician does not have to be on staff at BWMC to receive reports via auto fax.

Not only does the team coordinate care after discharge by faxing the discharge summary to the PCP, they also give patients discharge instructions regarding medications, diet, activity, follow-up timeframes and phone numbers. Telephone contact between the team providers and the PCP is highly encouraged and easy to initiate. The team also creates transfer summaries when the patient is being transferred to an alternative care facility.

For additional information, please contact:

Jill Albach
Manager, Physician Support
410-787-4865
Physicianopportunities@bwmc.umms.org

The pediatric hospitalist program was established at Baltimore Washington Medical Center to provide the highest quality health care to children. The program is comprised of a framework of board certified/eligible attending pediatricians who provide in-hospital coverage 24 hours a day. They oversee the care of patients hospitalized on the 10-bed pediatric unit and will coordinate care with the child's regular doctor to allow for treatment based on each patient's medical history. In addition, they annually see about 8,000 patients under age 18 in the emergency department. They also attend to newborns in the Pascal Women's Center. As part of their teaching mission, the pediatric hospitalists supervise rotating third-year medical students from the University of Maryland School of Medicine for three-week periods.

For more information, contact:

Esther Liu, M.D.
Chair, Pediatrics
410-787-4618

The library is located in the back left section of the coding/chart completion side of the Health Information Management Department. Because this area houses confidential medical records, only physicians have access to this area. The print collection is primarily books that have been recently updated. Other texts, as well as a core journals collection, are available online through MDConsult. This website will provide up to 200 BWMC physicians and staff with extensive texts and journals electronically. Access to this website can be through any PC at BWMC. Due to this, print versions of books will no longer be purchased if they are part of the MDConsult collection. Journal articles can be requested through the librarian via the contact information below.

Librarian
Wayne Reisig, MLS
410-955-3124

This meeting is conducted by the Business Development Department and was developed as a form of communication between the physician offices and Baltimore Washington Medical Center.

Contact the Business Development Department at 410-787-4865 or Physicianopportunities@bwmc.umms.org for further information.

The GMED (Graduate Medical Education Department) was developed in 2001 when BWMC became a teaching hospital through its affiliation with the University of Maryland School of medicine. The GMED is establishing policies and procedures to ensure that the residents and fellows adhere to contracts, credentialing, ACGME, and JCAHO guidelines. The department provides leadership to BWMC's directors, attending physicians, house staff members, and other personnel staff to assist in the training of the residents and fellows that are in training.

One of the primary policies that has been developed to achieve the above statement is a Supervision Policy for Residents and Fellows. The supervision policy outlines the following areas:

• Attending physician responsibilities
• Inpatient supervision
• On-call supervision
• Supervision of medical/surgical consultation
• Invasive procedures
• Resident/responsibilities requirements
• Supervising physician
• Resident/attending response
• Medical record documentation (attending, resident and hospital staff)
• Enforcement
• Disciplinary action
• Credentialing
• Privileges of residents

Baltimore Washington Medical Center GMED provides clinical, educational, research and professional development for medical students, residents and fellows for several of UMMS residency and fellowship programs. The specialties covered in these programs include:

• Cardiac Rehabilitation
• Emergency Medicine
• OB/GYN
• Orthopedic
• Pediatrics
• Psychiatry
• Vascular Surgery
• Urology

GMED looks forward to enhancing the program in the future with additional specialties to practice at BWMC.

For additional information on the residency and graduate medical education program, please contact:

Thelma Askew,
Residency Coordinator
410-787-4113