Can PAs Help Meet Patient Expectations?
On Monday, The Philadelphia Inquirer published a column called "Waiting to see the Doc: We truly do apologize" by Rachel K. Sobel, a third-year resident of the Wills Eye Residency Program at Thomas Jefferson University. Sobel writes about the frustration that patients and physicians alike experience when appointments are overbooked. Patients are forced to wait, and doctors are forced to scramble in order to address every problem as quickly as possible.
Nowadays, patients are double-booked into 15-minute time blocks. This is to hedge for no-shows and keep "volume" up so the office can be profitable.
But problems arise. That's the nature of medicine. People come in with ailments, and some don't fit into a neat time slot.
Today, in a letter to the editor, one reader expresses his concern that the problem of overly heavy caseloads will only intensify if health care reform is passed.
We now see physicians' assistants and nurse practitioners filling in for them. If we get 40 million more patients, who will attend them?
The answer, of course, is to give the old patients a couple of aspirin and send them home. Old people will no longer be a priority.
First, the Inquirer should know better--AP style clearly states that "physician assistant" receives no apostrophe. Period. Second, I don't know that giving "old people" the shaft is "of course" the answer, but this reader's concern about patient oversaturation and a shortage of primary care providers is legitimate (I won't get into his implied impression of PAs and NPs "filling in for" doctors).
If there is an influx of patients who are covered by medical insurance, how will PCPs, who are already swamped, manage to treat each and every one without sacrificing quality of care?
I think the health care industry has responded to shortages in the past with alarming success and will continue to do so. Now is the time for PAs to shine. What do you think?