Procedure Service

Diane Sliwka, MD Medical Director of Procedure Service

The Hospitalist Procedure Service (HPS) is dedicated to providing the highest quality and safest procedures to adult inpatients at Moffitt-Long Hospital at UCSF Medical Center. In addition, the service offers excellent teaching for internal medicine housestaff early in their residency. The service, started in 2008, was one of the first in the country dedicated to provide bedside procedural care in a teaching environment. In this model, during a dedicated housestaff rotation, hospitalists with extra procedural training and experience directly supervise PGY-1s in ultrasound evaluation and guidance in performing lumbar puncture, paracentesis, thoracentesis and knee arthrocentesis.

In a 2011 paper published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, "Patient satisfaction with a hospitalist procedure service: is bedside procedure teaching reassuring to patients?" HPS faculty Michelle Mourad and Diane Sliwka demonstrated that our procedure service model was associated with high levels of patient satisfaction with inpatient procedures. The service is available to all inpatients, 8a-5p Monday to Friday. HPS faculty also teach an annual procedures and ultrasound "mini-college" course open to hospitalists nationally each fall.

Questions about the Hospitalist Procedure Service can be directed to co-directors Diane Sliwka at dsliwka@medicine.ucsf.edu and Andy Lai at alai@medicine.ucsf.edu.