Nearly 22 percent more physician specialty practices employed nurse practitioners or physician assistants in 2016 than they did in 2008, according to a research letter published April 30 in JAMA Internal Medicine.
In all, 28.3 percent of specialty practices had at least one advanced practice provider (APP) in 2016, up from 23.2 percent in 2008.
“Overall growth in advanced practice clinicians may be driven by recent increases in graduates from advanced practice clinician programs, the emergence of value-based purchasing models that are incentivizing team-based care, and downward price pressure from public and private payers—making the lower costs of advanced practice clinician employment more attractive,” wrote lead author Grant R. Martsolf, PhD, MPH, with the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing, and colleagues.
“Advanced practice clinicians may also be increasingly moving into specialty practices as specialist physicians embrace new roles for advanced practice clinicians.”
The researchers examined the 2008 and 2016 SK&A outpatient provider files, which encompass 90 percent of physician practices in the U.S. They found multispecialty practices (49 percent) more most likely to use APPs, while surgical specialties (21 percent) were the least likely.
APPs were on staff in 31 percent of cardiology practices in 2016, up from 30.3 percent in 2008. Industry experts have pointed to the potential of APPs to alleviate the workload of the aging cardiologist workforce, as well as to take the lead in running diabetes or hypertension clinics.
“As the presence of advanced practice clinicians in the delivery of specialty care increases, future research will need to understand their contributions to access, quality, and value,” Martsolf et al. wrote.
Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.