Utilization of Advanced Practice Providers growing to meet demands

Article touches upon positives and benefits of utilizing advanced practice providers, but the framing as "physician extenders" and that "physicians will hand off more and more work to extenders as digital monitoring and expanded responsibilities under risk-based payments grow" is antiquated and an inappropriate given modern functionality of APPs.  APPs treat, diagnose, manage, prescribe, and sometimes provide some levels of procedural (surgical) interventions to a) support and ameliorate the care/condition of the patient, b) support the mission of healing and healthcare of the institution, and c) collaboratively work in partnership with all contributing to this care.

APPs are not merely "extenders" of work handed off by the physician.

"Almost every health system in the country is suffering from rising operational costs and declining physician populations, and most are finding a cure in hiring physician extenders.

Whether they be nurse practitioners, midwives, physician assistants, or other similar job roles, these healthcare professionals are stepping up to help fill the void caused by physician shortages, and to expand the services that physicians can offer.

'Looking back 10 or 15 years ago, probably less than a quarter of providers were using extenders broadly. Today you would be hard pressed to find a large hospital staff that is not using extenders in some shape or form,' said Kulleni Gebreyes, director of health services at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Both PricewaterhouseCoopers and ECRI Institute cited physician extenders as one of the top healthcare industry trends for 2015."

bit.ly/APPex33