A threatened limb can cross several specialty boundaries before anyone crosses the patient’s room. Infection, ischemia, neuropathy, surgery, offloading, and discharge planning all belong to the same person. Our hospital systems do not always behave that way. The podiatric hospitalist offers a practical way to bring those decisions together in a simpler job description. It fits perfectly into the Hot Foot Line model.
A timely paper that puts the model into words
Congratulations to Mentor Thaqi, Enrico Prajiante Bertolino, Pavel Kibrik, Jeffrey Shook, and senior author and long-time flowmigo Lee Kirksey on their new JAPMA Perspective, “Podiatric Hospitalist: Better Care Model,” published October 2, 2026. The Cleveland Clinic team articulates an important next step forward: making specialized foot and ankle expertise a dependable part of the inpatient care pathway.
The authors describe a podiatric hospitalist as a board-eligible or board-certified Doctor of Podiatric Medicine dedicated to acutely hospitalized patients with foot and ankle conditions. Cleveland Clinic’s experience moving from shared group call to an in-house podiatric hospitalist provides the setting for their proposed model. The role supplies consultation and co-management within the existing admitting structure, working alongside hospital medicine, vascular surgery, infectious disease, and other services.
This is broader than diabetic foot infection. The paper includes trauma, fractures, postoperative problems, Charcot neuroarthropathy, and lower-extremity conditions associated with peripheral artery disease and other chronic illnesses. Its central contribution is a framework for organizing care.
Toe and flow needs a dependable inpatient home
For a patient with an infected, poorly perfused foot, several decisions must move together: the urgency of source control, the perfusion assessment, the sequence of debridement and revascularization, the tissue that can be preserved, and the plan for mobility afterward. Expertise matters. So does having someone available to connect it.
A dedicated podiatric hospitalist can help keep the foot and ankle problem visible throughout the admission, from emergency assessment to the operating room, operative planning and discharge. That continuity gives the team a consistent clinical point of contact and gives the patient a clearer explanation of what happens next.
The authors’ care-model figure makes that relationship visible. Consultation and referral pathways feed into inpatient coverage and multidisciplinary integration. The proposed benefits extend to resource use, patient-centered care, value, and professional development. Those boxes describe the model’s aims; they are not measured effect sizes.
Already being used at locations around the USA
The podiatric hospitalist model is now being used at locations around the USA. Ashley Miller and team at Harbor UCLA comes to mind immediately. Cleveland Clinic describes its implementation in this paper; the University of Michigan’s fellowship alumni page also lists Christine Jarocki, DPM, as a podiatric hospitalist at Corewell Health in Grand Rapids, Michigan. These are concrete examples of the role taking shape in different health systems. Obviously, this is something that many of us have collectively been doing for a long time. This brings an elegance to the description.
Local arrangements will vary with patient volume, staffing, credentialing, surgical access, and community practice. The common thread is consistent inpatient foot and ankle expertise linked to multidisciplinary care and a reliable transition back to outpatient colleagues. The next step is to learn which arrangements work best, for whom, and under what conditions.
Promising evidence, with a clear boundary
This article is a Perspective informed by institutional experience and existing literature. It does not report a new comparative cohort, randomized trial, or original outcomes dataset. It therefore cannot quantify how much a dedicated podiatric hospitalist changes amputation, length of stay, readmission, costs, or patient satisfaction.
Related evidence supports the clinical rationale. In a retrospective study at a Michigan community hospital, Behme and colleagues reported 30-day readmission rates of 4.2% among patients receiving podiatric surgery consultation versus 11.3% among those without consultation. That association is encouraging, but consultation is not the same intervention as a dedicated hospitalist service, and an observational comparison does not establish causation.
The practical lesson is to treat timely specialty involvement as a promising pathway to better care while measuring the contribution of the staffing model itself. Shorter admissions should be judged alongside discharge readiness, subsequent use of care, mobility, and the patient’s experience.
The next step: make coordination measurable
An implementation program should begin with explicit responsibilities: who responds to urgent foot and ankle consultations, who coordinates infection and perfusion decisions, how operative access is arranged, and who owns the transition home. A staffing title alone cannot answer those questions.
We should then measure the parts of the pathway patients actually experience: time to specialist assessment, time to indicated source control and vascular evaluation, avoidable inpatient delays, major amputation, readmission, safe offloading, timely follow-up, and recovery of function. Comparisons should account for wound severity, ischemia, infection, comorbidity, and access to care.
Multicenter work could turn an emerging practice into an evidence-based service model. It could also establish whether the role creates sustainable careers in education, leadership, and research—the professional benefits the authors appropriately identify as requiring further study.
Thaqi, Bertolino, Kibrik, Shook, and Kirksey have given hospitals a useful vocabulary and a practical starting framework. That is a contribution worth celebrating. For patients, the promise is straightforward: fewer gaps between the people who know what needs to happen and the people who can make it happen.
Related reading
References
- Thaqi M, Prajiante Bertolino E, Kibrik P, Shook J, Kirksey L. Podiatric Hospitalist: Better Care Model. Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association. 2026;116:78. Published October 2, 2026.
- University of Michigan Medical School. Podiatry Fellowship alumni: Christine Jarocki, DPM—Podiatry Hospitalist, Corewell Health, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Accessed October 8, 2026.
- Behme S, Husain ZS, Santiago Rivera OJ. Impact of Podiatric Surgery Consultation for Foot and Ankle Wounds on Patient Outcomes in a Community Hospital. Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery. 2023;62(6):916–921.
- Miller JD, Lew EJ, Giovinco NA, Ochoa C, Rowe VL, Clavijo LC, Weaver F, Armstrong DG. How to Create a Hot Foot Line to Prevent Diabetes-Related Amputations: Instant Triage for Emergency Department and Inpatient Consultations. Journal of the American Podiatric Medical Association. 2019;109(2):174–179. doi:10.7547/17-204.
Limb preservation depends on connecting expertise to timely action. The podiatric hospitalist gives that connection a dependable place in the hospital.
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