Ranks of NPs and PAs Expanding; Will Increasingly Dominate Primary Care

I have blogged extensively lately about the future of primary care, suggesting that NPs and PAs will dominate the professional ranks of this first tier of healthcare. NPs in particular are at the core of the staffing for the CVS and Walmart walk-in clinic facilities (see:Retail Drug Stores Emerging as Healthcare Hubs for First-Tier Primary Care;Walmart Shapes Its Own Primary Care, Unbundling Strategy;Defining and Delineating the Changing First Tier of Healthcare). Physicians, of course, will still play a critical role in primary care, consulting for the more complex cases and assisting in the referral of patients to medical specialists (see:Physicians Are Disappearing from the Front Line of Healthcare;PCPs Responsible for Allocating About 90% of Total Hospital Costs). With this background, I thus thought that it would be instructive to provide some key facts about these two groups of healthcare professionals. Here's some data about NPs provided by theAmerican Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) (see:NP Fact Sheet):There are more than 270,000 nurse practitioners (NPs) licensed in the U.S.* More than 28,700 new NPs completed their academic programs in 2017 –2018....* 72.6% of all NPs deliver primary care....* 41.7% of full-time NPs hold hospital privileges....* 95.7% of NPs prescribe medications and those in full-time practice write an average of 20 prescriptions per day....* NPs hold prescriptive privileges, including controlled substances in all ...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Healthcare Business Healthcare Delivery Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Population Health Public Health Source Type: blogs