CATHY GILBERT/Clarendon Citizen - Dr. Catie Rabon, far left, confers with nurses Parker Johnson and Jennifer Amaker about a patient in the ICU. Rabon, CMH’s new hospitalist specializes in in-patient care at the hospital.
CHS welcomes new hospitalist Dr. Catie Rabon
Not that many years ago, when you or a family member was in the hospital, you could often expect to see your physician before daylight when he or she made rounds before going to meet their office obligations.
It was a trick to get to talk to them as they were usually very rushed. Just seeing the patient was only the beginning of what that hospital visit would entail – meeting with nurses and other staff members, reviewing tests and writing new orders to make sure the patient was properly cared for.
And heaven forbid if the patient needed their doc in the middle of the day … that doctor was usually up to his eyeballs in office patients, many of whom were getting impatient because of inevitable delays.
Enter the hospitalist program.
Hospitalists are board certified physicians, usually in either internal medicine or family medicine, and are the in-house physician for patients admitted for care. Hospital medicine, like emergency medicine, is a specialty organized around a site of care (the hospital), rather than an organ (like cardiology), a disease (like oncology), or a patient’s age (like pediatrics).
Clarendon Memorial Hospital has employed the services of hospitalists since 2006. Until recently, those physicians were contracted to work at CMH from a company whose business it is to staff those positions.
However, CMH has decided to employ its own hospitalists now and have hired Dr. Catie Rabon to oversee the development of that program.
Dr. Rabon has been a hospitalist since the beginning of her medical career and comes most recently from Tuomey Hospital where she worked for almost 11 years.
“I love being a hospitalist,” she said. “I get to be a part of patient care from admission to discharge. I like working with the acutely ill, and while it may be a little more challenging than an office practice, it is never, ever boring.”
Dr. Rabon will serve as the medical director of CMH’s hospitalist program and is currently in the process of staffing the program.
“Medical care is like a puzzle,” she explained. “We want to put all the pieces together.”
The perception is often that once in-patient care is turned over to a hospitalist that a patient’s regular physician is left out in the cold.
“That’s certainly not the case,” Dr. Rabon explained. “It’s really a win-win situation. We stay in close communication with a patient’s regular physician and that physician can be assured that their patient is getting quality care and will still be able to maintain order in their in-office practice.”
Dr. Rabon is a graduate of Converse College where she received an undergraduate degree in chemistry. She went to the Medical University of South Carolina to earn her medical degree, did an internship in general surgery at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center and then her residency in internal medicine at Palmetto Richland Hospital.
A single mom, Dr. Rabon has two children that are 10 and 12 and two step-children that are 19 and 22.
Spare time is not something Dr. Rabon has an abundance of and says she spends a lot of time “carting kids around.” She loves to cook and is a voracious reader.
She is a member of the Society of Hospital Medicine, the American College of Physicians, the Sumter-Clarendon-Lee Medical Society and the South Carolina Medical Association.
She is also a member of the Sumter Junior Welfare League and Alice Drive Baptist Church.
Dr. Rabon says she is excited about bringing CMH’s hospitalist program up to full speed.
“We are transitioning right now from the contracted hospitalists to in-house staff physicians,” she explained. “Hospital medicine is the fastest growing medical sub-specialty. But that makes recruiting difficult. But we are going to find the best staff available and I believe this program will be a true asset to CMH.”
