With doctor shortages in many areas of the country, nurse practitioners are filling the gaps, and the role has become the fastest-growing field in healthcare. Te-Ping Chen reports for The Wall Street Journal:
These days, heading to the doctor’s office often doesn’t involve a doctor. At least not directly. Instead, nurse practitioners have become major gap fillers, growing their ranks by 60% to 461,000 between 2019 and 2025, data from the American Association of Nurse Practitioners show.
Physician assistants who can fill similar roles are also in high demand, as are other non-MD health providers. They are all part of a broader trend to push basic care beyond the doctor’s office. In many states, for example, pharmacists now prescribe medications such as contraceptives and flu treatments.
This shift has sparked some controversy: Doctors’ groups say there is danger in deploying people who don’t undergo the rigor of medical school and residency to do unsupervised doctor-level work. These groups have tried to stop states from changing rules to widen the market for NPs and PAs, as the other professions are known.
But the graying population frequently demands more care than doctors can provide. The number of doctors the U.S. can add a year is limited by available residency slots, and many newly minted MDs often bypass primary care in favor of higher-paying specialties. The U.S. is currently facing a shortage of 16,000 primary-care physicians, according to an analysis by the nonprofit KFF, which researches healthcare policy, and projections show the shortage is likely to dramatically worsen.
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