Denver Health

Denver Health is an integrated health care system that provides primary and acute care to 25% of the residents of Denver. Denver Health consists of a main hospital with nearly 500 beds and 8 outlying community clinics, and is a nationally renowned model for “safety net” hospital systems across the country. It is unique in its integration of inpatient, urgent care, and outpatient facilities with shared diagnostic facilities and medical record. The hospital offers newly renovated ward floors, a recently constructed ICU, an electronic medical record, and computerized physician order entry. The patient population is diverse, encompassing insured and indigent. There is a large Spanish-speaking population. Residents and interns in internal medicine, as well as interns in other departments take care of patients with basic medical problems, as well as unusual cases and late presentations of illnesses. Additionally, hospitalists handle non-teaching services that off-load patients from resident-run services.

The general medicine ward service includes eight upper level residents and eight R1’s working in a day/night shift system with geographic patient assignments. Overnight call is every sixth night. The shift system accords interns substantial autonomy, but they have 24-7 backup from upper level residents and in-house hospitalists.

Additionally, there is a closed CCU/MICU staffed by teams of one R3 and one R1 supervised by both a cardiologist and an intensivist. The ICU teams rotate in a traditional q4 call cycle. The ICU takes care of problems such as sepsis, complications of drug and alcohol abuse, and esoteric problems in critical care.

rev 08/07/09