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Five years ago, the iPod® existed only in the minds of those at Apple Computer, Inc. In 2003, few people had heard of it. Three years and 42 million unit sales later, iPod is a household name. "Hospitalists are the iPod of medicine," says Society for Hospital Medicine (SHM) CEO Lawrence Wellikson, MD, FACP. This is a fitting description for a specialty whose ranks swelled from 2,000 to 15,000 in under a decade and whose docs-most of whom are in their 20s and 30s-fill the gap between outpatient and inpatient medicine for primary care physicians (PCP). Hospitalist and Practice Solutions Founder and President Kenneth G. Simone, DO, says hospitals use hospitalists to address several areas