Robert Wachter is Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where he directs the 60-physician Division of Hospital Medicine. Author of 250 articles, he coined the term hospitalist in 1996 and is generally considered the father of the hospitalist field, the fastest growing specialty in the history of modern medicine. He is past president of the Society of Hospital Medicine, past chair of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and a recipient of the Eisenberg Award, the nation s top honor in patient safety. For the past seven ye...