The hospitalist program at the University of Chicago was established in 1997. In 2000 it was reorganized as the Academic Hospitalist Program with the specific goal of providing a nurturing academic environment to promote the career development, professional satisfaction, and retention of hospitalists. The Academic Hospitalist Program sits administratively within the Section of General Internal Medicine and is supported by independent funding from the University of Chicago Hospitals. Clinical collections and salary recovery for clinical time are managed by the Section of General Internal Medicine, while the academic hospitalist program manages the budget for time spent in non-clinical duties, including primarily quality improvement and systems development efforts for the Hospital and research. Hospital support for this has typically been renewed for three-year increments, incorporating plans for growth as anticipated at the beginning of each period. Two of the major reasons the hospital has been willing to continue to support our program are our ability to provide evidence that our hospitalists produce resource savings and the hospital’s recognition of the institutional value of our quality improvement and research activities.