Comment by jimnotgym

Thanks, but that doesn't really answer my question. It demonstrates that it is a thing in America, but for it to be an exclusively American thing I would really need some confirmation that it is not widely used in other places. Cheers for whoever downvoted, would love to understand why asking a question gets a downvote?

Quite common across the US. It's a doctor, usually trained in internal medicine, who does not see patients in a clinic. Only in the hospital.

Very few general medicine doctors see clinic patients and hospital patients these days. In subspecialties, it's still common to do both, but we've started to see OB hospitalists, and it's not unheard of for surgeons who have aged out of doing surgery (malpractice insurance becomes onerous to obtain in procedural specialties after age 70) to continue working in their former practice as clinic-only doctors, which allows the younger ones to stay in the OR (which is where the surgeon makes almost all of their money) rather than run back to clinic fifteen minutes down the road to see routine follow-ups.

I first encountered it in 2009, in Seattle, when I spent time in a hospital. I'd never heard the term before...but then, I'd never spent time in a hospital before, either.

I have, but only because my brother-in-law is one. If he weren't, I most likely wouldn't have heard of it either.