Dive Brief:
- Increasingly, hospitals and other health care facilities are coping with a severe shortage of physicians by taking on nonphysician providers.
- Recent research by the Medical Group Management Association finds that the number of full-time nonphysician providers per physician has increased by 11% since 2008.
- The MGMA study concluded that medical practices that hire or develop nonphysician providers tend to perform better financially, a trend which has been evident since 2004, the trade group reports.
Dive Insight:
Not only do nonphysician providers improve practice profitability, they can improve quality, health leaders say. According to David Taylor, vice president of regional services at CoxHealth in Springfield, MO, patients seeing nonphysician providers are likely to be seen more quickly, and what's more, the NPPs spend more time with patients.
Still, NPPs are more common in urgent care centers and retail clinics. Over time, however, with physician shortages growing worse, it seems likely that NPPs will play an increasingly important role in medical practices.prov