It used to be when patients went to a doctor's office, they saw a doctor.
Today, they may not see one at all.
There's a shift under way in the delivery of health care, particularly in the primary care setting. As fewer doctors pursue family medicine, as health care costs continue to rise and as more people live with chronic diseases, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are more often handling annual exams, prenatal visits, acute care and management of chronic diseases such as diabetes.
These midlevel providers perform many of the same tasks as doctors, including diagnosing and treating conditions, prescribing medications, and ordering lab work and other tests. To do so, they undergo specialized, multiyear post-graduate training, although critics point out that they lack the depth of training of physicians, who spend seven or eight years in medical school and residency.
3 comments:
This has been happening for sometime now.
The biggest complaint I have heard is that the fee is the same.
when I have a doctor's visit I intend to see a doctor; I did not schedule a physician assistant appointment. if I scheduled an appointment with someone other than the doctor, I do not expect to pay for a doctor's visit, fee should be less
I will take a PA over a doctor any time. My gyny is a practitioner. She knows way more than the doctor.
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