3 reasons to add physician assistants to your practice

There are many reasons to add physician assistants (PAs) to your practice's team but the most compelling may include increased patient satisfaction and an improved bottom line, according to a report on Executive Insight.

There has been rapid growth in the number of PAs working in the U.S., with the number increasing over 35 percent in the last five years, FiercePracticeManagement reported this week. Adding PAs to the healthcare team can directly contribute to improved patient satisfaction and is cost-effective because these practitioners earn much lower salaries than physicians, write Cynthia Flournoy, an administrator at healthcare services company DaVita Kidney Care, and Dawn Morton-Rias, president and CEO of the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA).

One group of clinics that has added PAs is the University of Washington Neighborhood Clinics in Seattle. "We have recruited certified PAs to all of our 10 primary care clinics. Working closely with physicians in care teams, they have expanded our capacity and improved our ability to effectively care for more complex patients," Peter McGough, M.D., the group's medical director, told the authors.

Flournoy and Morton-Rias cite the following reasons to employ PAs at your practice:

They provide a competitive edge. PAs help ensure more available and same-day appointments for patients and can enable a practice to expand its office hours. That can be important as many people cite convenience and time savings as reasons why they turn to retail clinics and urgent care clinics as alternatives to visits to primary care doctors. Adding PAs from diverse ethnic, racial, social and culture backgrounds, allows a practice to meet the needs of more patients. More than 22 percent of PAs communicate with patients in a second language, according to an NCCPA report released earlier this week.

They free up physicians to handle more complex patients. PAs can handle most office visits, leaving physicians more time to provide care to patients with complex medical needs.

They allow for cost-effective staffing. While the average family medicine physician earns a salary of more than $180,000, the average PA in family medicine earns an estimated $90,000 per year. But they can also generate significant revenue.

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