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 the American 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 50 states and D.C....
* In 2018, the mean, full-time base salary for NPs was $105,903....
* The average age of NPs is 49 years.
Here are some facts about PAs: (see: Cohort of Newly Certified Physician Assistants is the Profession's Largest, Youngest Yet):
The latest Statistical Profile of Recently Certified Physician Assistants....indicates that 9,287 physician assistants were certified for the first time in 2018, a 26.5 percent increase from 2013. 72.5 percent of the cohort are under 30 years old, making it the youngest group of Certified PAs yet....74.4 percent of newly Certified PAs who accepted a job offer received two or more offers, and 71.9 percent reported that they faced no challenges while searching for a job,....24 percent of newly Certified PAs who have accepted a job are working in primary care, with the highest percentages in family medicine/general practice, surgical subspecialties and emergency medicine. The median salary for newly Certified PAs is $95,000 per year.
Finally, here are some of my thoughts based on the NP and PA data above:
- NPs greatly outnumber PAs in the health workforce with about four times the number of PAs in the U.S.; they also have a slight salary edge.
- The majority of PAs seem to work as physician extenders in physician offices and in hospital outpatient centers. I have also personally observed that many of them work somewhat independently of their partner physicians.
- Many NPs work independently in primary care centers such as those developed by CVS and Walmart. Their ability to prescribe medications (see above) is critical when they work in these "big box" walk-in clinics.
- Given the aggressive growth of the CVS and Walmart walk-in clinics, the number of NP's in these facilities will rapidly increase (see: CVS Health Announces Significant Expansion of HealthHUB to Deliver a Differentiated, Consumer Health Experience).
- Urgent care clinics will also contribute to the increasing demand for PA's (see: Who Works in Urgent Care Clinics?).
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