Non-Physician Practitioners Playing Larger Roles in Cancer Care
Posted almost 10 years ago by Nicholas M Perrino
"According to a 2007 study commissioned by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), demand for oncology services is expected to rise 48 percent between 2005 and 2020, yet due to retirements and a limited influx of new oncologists, the supply of those services is expected to grow by just 14 percent. 'This translates into a shortage of 9.4 to 15.0 million visits, or 2,550 to 4,080 oncologists — roughly one-quarter to one-third of the 2005 supply,' according to the study that appeared in the Journal of Oncology Practice.
The health care system is helping to fill that gap — as recommended in the study — by putting portions of oncology care into the hands of non-physician staff members: nurse practitioners (NPs), physician assistants (PAs) and oncology clinical pharmacists.
Elizabeth Prechtel Dunphy, an advanced practice nurse in oncology at the University of Pennsylvania, has seen how the utilization of NPs translates to the patient as an increase in flexibility and accessibility of care, which, in turn, allows for improved quality of care, potentially resulting in better patient outcomes — although this idea needs more study. 'Oftentimes, a physician is pulled in many different directions, and the continuity (that NPs provide) is important to many patients,' Dunphy says. 'At this significant time in their lives, having someone to help guide them is very comforting.'
Even without widespread oncology-specific training, however, the use of non-physician practitioners (NPPs) is sparking positive results, according to a 2011 survey by ASCO of physicians, non-physician practitioners (NPPs) and patients connected with 226 oncology practices.
In most of the surveyed practices, NPPs saw patients on their own, but with a physician present in the building, and the majority of patients understood that they were seeing non-physician practitioners. The overall satisfaction score of patients with their NPPs was 92.5 percent; physicians reported an 80 percent satisfaction rate with the arrangement, and NPPs were 78 percent satisfied.
Practices that allowed NPPs to work with all their physicians and see a variety of patients reported a 19 percent increase in productivity over practices that restricted their NPPs to working with specific physicians."