''You may not know it, but the person you see at the doctor's office may be a nurse practitioner and not a physician,'' reads the opening line of an article in Rochester, Minn.'s news channel web site (''Nurse practitioners help patients more often'' - http://www.kttc.com/Global/story.asp?S=9054490).  The article does a good job of depicting the ...

A nice article about nurse practitioners showed up in the New York City edition of yesterday's New York Times. Although titled ''Yes, the P.A. Will See You Now,'' the article looks at both physician assistant and NP roles, and it does a good job covering education, salary and job experience. The reporter does once refer to NPs and PAs as ...

The article starts out promising good PR for nurse practitioners: ''Peggy O'Donnell, a Lynbrook nurse practitioner, knows a thing or two about picking a good primary care physician.'' This is O'Donnell's opportunity to explain that an NP often can be your primary care provider — and even better, that there are studies that show that NP care is ...

Angie's List has plans to let consumers rate their health care providers. The 12-year-old Indianapolis-based company maintains lists of consumer ratings for all kinds of local businesses and services. According to a company press release, the 600,000 list members have been asking for years to add health care providers, hospitals and insurers to ...

A recent survey by Deloitte revealed that Americans want health care to change. This may come as no surprise, but some of the study's findings, taken from a sample of 3,000 respondents, are of interest: 66% were in favor of a state-mandated health insurance. 34% say they would use a retail clinic; 16 percent already have. 60% want ...

  Opening my Providence (Rhode Island) Journal this morning (OK, online), I saw yet another report on physician objections to retail or convenient care clinics. The same article, but with different names, has been showing up about once a week somewhere in the country for the past 3 years. The article always cites physician charges that ...