| Physician assistants (PAs) are a growing part of the workforce and could help offset predicted physician shortages. This project examines data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) for policy-relevant information about national PA practice.;Part one compares characteristics of visits to PAs only with those to physicians between 1996 and 2003. Since MEPS only records that a PA was seen if a physician was not also seen at the same visit, the physician visits recorded may also have included PAs or others. Compared to patients who saw physicians, patients who saw PAs only were more likely to be rural, younger, female, white, Midwest or Westerners, privately insured, managed care participants, of higher socioeconomic status, and healthier. With the exception of rurality, these differences were small.;Part two investigates the association of PA-only visits with patient satisfaction and number of visits per year. Persons reporting substantive PA-only care (>30% of their visits) over one year were matched with persons reporting no PA-only visits on factors potentially affecting the study outcomes. Results showed that neither patient satisfaction nor office visit numbers were associated with substantive PA-only participation in care.;Results of this study should be interpreted cautiously since MEPS undercounts PAs by about 75% and an unknown fraction of physician visits may also have included PAs. These results can potentially help us better understand PA contributions to health care and may be of benefit to health care workforce planning efforts. |
