The Eroding “Doctor” Label
It came as a Twitter “follow” from @coldfeet65, a self-proclaimed “Nurse Practitioner Hospitalist.” I had never heard this term before. Does it mean a nurse practitioner who cares for hospitalists? Or is it a hospitalist who is a nurse practitioner? Or maybe it’s a nurse practitioner who helps hospitalists? (Honestly, I think I know which one she means, but you get my point.)
Perhaps this is a prescient glimpse to healthcare of the future, where our more typical nurse and doctor labels are supplanted by more and more monikers that serve to confuse, rather than clarify, each of our roles in healthcare delivery. As specialists in cardiology, we’ve seen a similar trend with cardiology hospitalists. But we should be clear what this means to the patients and doctors going forward.
No doubt most people in America still expect to see a doctor when they come to the hospital. Increasingly, it appears that might not be the case. Your doctor might be a robot while a nurse (aka, nurse practitioner) will be the one providing the hands-on care in the inpatient setting. Is that a good thing? Honestly, I’m not sure.
No one argues that the costs in healthcare need to be cut. No doubt the central authority has deemed that doctor salaries will be a big part of that effort. Already, 20 states have cut physician Medicaid payments for fiscal year 2010 and, given the current economic pressure on our states both now and after they start feeling the financial impact of the “Affordable” Care Act in 2019, this trend is not likely to improve anytime soon. As a result, we are seeing that the world is full of “creative solutions” to our healthcare access crisis and the evolution to “nurse practitioner hospitalists” might be one of these.
But what are doctors of medicine becoming as a result? Are our current cohort of primary care doctors becoming little more than nurse managers and fact checkers of mandated protocols, treatment guidelines, and care directives? Hopefully not.
But increasingly it appears that those without a hands-on, invasive skills in medicine (like surgery) are being marginalized in the healthcare models going forward. This trend now appears to even be affecting the much-heralded inpatient hospitalist care model as the doctor shortage intensifies. Consequently, the image of “doctor” as we knew it is changing, not only for what patients can expect to encounter when they come to a hospital, but for the type (and caliber) of the doctor we attract to our profession going forward.
-WesMusings of a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist.
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
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