Winthrop F. Whitcomb, MD, has been a practicing hospitalist since 1994 at Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. From 1994 through 2004, he served as director of the Mercy Inpatient Medicine Service, America’s first and most widely emulated program with 24/7 on-site hospitalist staffing. Since cofounding the Society of Hospital Medicine in 1996, he has been widely recognized as a principal leader of the U.S. hospitalist movement and the field of hospital medicine. Currently, Dr. Whitcomb serves as director of Performance Improvement at Mercy Medical Center and as director of Hospitalist Services for Catholic Health East, a 42-hospital system in the eastern United States. He is assistant professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He has provided consultation to hospitalist programs throughout the United States since 1996.