Optum, Primary Care Physicians, and NPs
Nurse Practitioners are NOT primary care physicians. The training and education differences are vast. In fact, this is offensive to MDs and DOs to say their years of medical school and residency does not matter. This also is a concerted effort by NPs and Optum to confuse the public. Lastly, it is another example of professional appropriation.
Where is the AMA, AAFP, ACP or any other group that should be fighting this?
Crickets.
I don’t think it is appropriate to assert that the AMA is doing nothing about this issue. As the Chair of the AMA Academic Physicians Section Governing Council, with an interest that we send our medical graduates out into a job market that values and needs their services, I know that AMA has extensive data showing that NPs and MDs/DOs locate in the same areas with the same frequency. I have seen AMA maps of numerous of the various states that show this. The problem is at the intersection between legislators and their constituents, the NP advocates have, AS INDIVIDUALS, done a much better job of contacting their legislators, the ones making the decisions and laws. As doctors we give much less $$ for political advocacy than lawyers and we give less time to advocate for ourselves than NPs
So, basically the AMA has done nothing.
We live in the world of pretend, Some sort of magic will step in and save us from Reality. Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, EMT’s and MD/DO’s are only different in Reality. A PA can do spinal surgery with Google Glasses, for this is part of our world of pretend. We will have a preventative vaccine against COVID-19, even though the first screening for HIV infection is, of course, antibodies – which do not cure the disease. We could make monoclonal antibodies against HIV. We have been trying to develop a vaccine for 25 years. But magic says that vaccination against COVID-19 takes a few weeks.
Many societies – the Mayans, the Easter Islanders – were discovered by Western civilizations a few centuries after they had seen the instrument of doom coming at their culture, and did NOTHING to intercede. These were primitive, superstitious people who could not cope with enlightened reality. We have met the enemy, and they are us.