When I did my IM rotation, we rotated with hospitalists and they did work hard, but their schedule was their own. They had a collective pt load (about 15-25 pts per hospitalist) and made their own daytime hours, basically 7am to 3pm or 9am to 6pm during the day for 3 weeks; then worked 5 weeks of of Fri, Sat, Sun only shft, and had 2 weeks of overnight 7pm-7am for admissions. They had short call during the day shift weeks until 7pm Q4. After every cycle of 10 weeks they got 2 weeks off. I would estimate them working 60-75 hrs/week. They signed out to eachother by group email, and the overnight/on call person who did the admissions split up the patients evenly.
They worked for the hospital and handled all the service patients (no insurance, no PCP, PCP w/o admitting priviledges in the hospital). They managed the patients then signed them out to their PCP by phone or found them a PCP upon discharge. They handled every aspect of the patients care, often touching base with the PCP to maintain continuity (the outpatient PCP would know things like family history, number of admisstions, etc, etc..). They did call consults, but that was only to have another person agree with the plan. This allowed sharing of liability, and it wasn't like they didn't know what to do once the consult was called.
Our teams consisted of: hospitalist, senior resident, intern, and two students. We all split up the work and the day ended when we were done. We had to be there at 7am to get the new patient list and round with the resident, and met up with the hospitalist when they arrived for the day. We then rounded on everyone, split up the list, did what we had to do, break for lunch, and did rounds at the end of the day to go home. The whole day the hospitalist is seeing patients, meeting with the family, and overseeing our work. The resident/intern/student assigned to the patient did all the scut/ordering of labs/consults under the hospitalist's recommendations. We each had about 2-5 patients to manage.
Teaching happened during the rounds when we would discuss an interesting case, and occasionally we would all present up to 10 minutes a random topic we were assigned during the day.
The only down side I saw to it was the lack of continuity once the shift changes or if the pt is discharged. And pts with long admissions have to see their doctor change every few weeks without warning alot of the time.
I think it is really good to have a hospitalist service in a hospital, or part of a primary care group to provide the best care for a patient. I think it's a very good job for IM, FP or Med/Peds residents fresh out of residency.
Oh and I forgot to add that starting salary was 150K + a percentage of the revenue billed to insurace for service patients. not bad.... and your referral base is strong if you would like to set up a private practice in the area since the specialists already know you.
, full-time+,of course. But still, quite amazing...and no $250K in debt 
