Lifehacks for PAs

Solving the PA work-life balance problem.

from AAPA

In today’s fast-moving, constantly connected, 24/7 world, maintaining a healthy balance among work, family, and taking care of ourselves can be a challenge. The first step in achieving this balance is to be mindful and deliberate about it: decide what is important and then set boundaries that will enable you to maintain the balance you seek. Here are some tips to help you work through the process.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Nurse Practitioner, Physician Assistant Salary Grew in 2016

Nurse practitioner and physician assistant salary and job satisfaction rates increased in 2016, a new survey found.

from RevCycle Intelligence

As nurse practitioner and physician assistant salary rates continue to rise, a recent PracticeMatch survey found that more advanced practitioners are also increasingly enjoying their jobs. The survey of over 1,000 nurse practitioners and physician assistants found that about half of the clinicians experienced a boost in income between 2016 and 2015, with 12 percent reporting an increase in compensation of 8 percent or higher.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

When Medicine Is Hard

A PA on the front lines of clinical medicine discusses the emotional impact of her profession.

from NEJM Journal Watch

My posts are usually lighthearted and (hopefully) informative observations on the differences between my experiences in medicine here in the U.K. versus the U.S. But today I am writing about something that’s both personal and cross-cultural — something that has at times been a struggle for me and likely has been a struggle for health care providers in every corner of medicine, whether we talk about it or not. I’d like to write about when medicine is hard.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Dave’s Blog: How Do We Measure Our Worth?

How do NPs and PAs measure their worth, when they can only bill at 85%?

by Dave Mittman, PA, DFAAPA

In all societies, consumers are generally able to judge what to pay for each service they request. And the market sets the fees. Shoe shining. Car repairs. Tires. A haircut. All are judged by their relative worth. Having someone clean your house is worth what it is worth to you because you have the money to pay someone for a service you can measure. A clean house is worth something to you. So are shined shoes or a good haircut.

We in medicine do not have that luxury.

How much each patient pays for a service has no natural relationship to the value of the product the health professional “provides”. How does the consumer ever get to judge whether the product they are buying is worth the price they are paying any healthcare provider? Treating hypertension successfully? Cholesterol? A spinal manipulation? Is it worth what the insurance company is billed and the patient’s co-pay? New glasses that are a bit better than your old glasses? Worth it? Psychotherapy you went to for six months at $180.00 an hour and your not even sure what you got out of it? Worth it? How about therapy that saved your child from cutting themselves or worse? Successful cancer treatment? Strep throat, seeing an NP or PA and getting Augmentin? What is really worth the price paid and the asking price of the practitioner? What is naturopathy worth when it does not work, or allopathic medicine for that matter?

How do you measure our worth? Is it what we charge? Clearly, we PAs and NPs, over the last 50 years, have kept health costs down. We would not have been hired had we not saved the system or our practice money. I know we doing that now but who ultimately benefits? Do we even know our own worth?

Does the consumer have any way to measure that worth at all? And is what NPs and PAs charge worth 85% for the same service charged at 100% by a physician? And if it is billed at 100% because of laws put into effect decades ago, is it really worth our professions being kept invisible?

So that is the crux of my question. Yes, we charge less for the same treatment if we give it “alone” in many cases. And, in theory that saves the system money. But it also robs us of our soul. Why, because most health systems don’t want us to charge less for the same service, so they have “the doctor” pop in for what amounts to less than one minute and “consult” thereby presumably guaranteeing the 100% reimbursement to the system. It also guarantees us two things. One is that we look like we are being checked up on. I see NPs and PAs for my care. Invariably, at least now in Florida, a physician will say hello and ask me one question. The PA or NP will determine my treatment and diagnosis and write the prescription, invariably before the physician pops her head in. But it seems like they consent. And that is not really the case. WE also become invisible to the government, to Medicare or Medicaid, to the private insurers who think (seemingly so) that the patient in question was seen by a physician. The biller knows no less. This has to end.

I can’t think of any other professions where that happens in the same way. It’s time we PAs and NPs worked together to change it. It keeps all of us invisible. It was never the intent of the 85% rule. It confuses patients and it robs us of our soul. And that my colleagues, is never a good thing.


Dave Mittman has been a PA and later NP leader for thirty years. He co-founded the LIU PA Program student society, was President of the New York State Society of PAs from 1978-1979 and served on the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) Board of Directors from 1981-1983. Dave was also the first USAF Reserves PA permitted to practice. Dave spent 9 years in primary care in Brooklyn, N.Y. and left to begin a career in medical publishing with Physician Assistant Journal. Dave has also won the AAPA Public Education award for leading the march in Trenton NJ to establish PA practice. Dave left PA Journal to co-found Clinicians Publishing Group (1990) and Clinician Reviews Journal in 1991. Dave has authored papers in publications as diverse as “Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mothers Soul”, “U.S. Pharmacist”, “The British Medical Journal” and others. Dave¹s paper in the BMJ was the first internationally written paper written on PA practice. Dave and a few very close PA colleagues co-founded the PAs For Tomorrow”” in 2012 which is a new national professional organization representing and advocating for PAs in an different way. Dave as spoken at hundreds of NP and PA meetings and always has some interesting thoughts on the future of both professions. Most recently Dave has been busy launching another dream; Clinician 1, the first internet community for PAs and NPs. Dave is married to his sweetheart Bonnie for 32 years and has two wonderful children.

What’s Working in Rural Care Like? One PA Tells All.

When I was in school, being a rural PA was my dream. Now that I’m living it, I wanted to tell you a little about my experience.

from Clinician Today

I am apparently in the minority. According to the 2015 AAPA salary report, 51.7 percent of PAs work in an urban setting of more than 1 million people. Further, 12.4 percent work in an area where the closest town has a population of 20,000 people or less. I am in the remaining 2.5 percent. I serve about 2,000–3,000 people who do not live near a metropolitan area.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Quality of Care by Physicians, Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants Equal in Health Centers

In community health centers, PAs and NPs deliver care equivalent to that of primary care physicians, according to a new first-of-its-kind study.

from Contemporary Clinic

Under the Affordable Care Act, there’s a growing dependence on community health centers in the United States—particularly among medically underserved areas that typically serve low-income, uninsured, minority, and immigrant populations. As a result, the health care system is increasingly relying on non-physician clinicians to provide primary care.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

10 States with Highest and Lowest Physician Assistant Salary

Physician assistants earn an average of $92,460 per year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

from Becker’s Hospital Review

PA salary varies by state from a high of $112,250 in Rhode Island to a low of $50,200 in Mississippi. Here are the 10 states with the highest and 10 with the lowest average PA salaries based on BLS data gathered in May 2012, the most recent data available.

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Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

Dave’s Blog: The PA Doctorate—Needed or Not?

Where does the doctorate for PAs fit in? Dave Mittman analyzes just that.

by Dave Mittman, PA, DFAAPA

It is ten years from now.

You are a patient. Or better yet, your two-year-old daughter is a patient. And you know just a little about medical people. You do know that the pharmacist you see, the physical therapist you see and the NP you see all practice at the “doctorate” level. You appreciate that, and in some ways, you expect people who are going to make decisions that could affect your children’s health to practice at that level. Do you want to see “Ms. Assistant” or “Dr. Practitioner”? Not knowing anything more, I know who I would want. I know who I would pick to guide my healthcare decisions, and my daughter’s. If I am a PA, I have to realize sooner or later (and no, not yet) all “advanced” health professionals will have a doctorate. Do I want myself to be in the above situation? PAs spend more hours in their clinical training than almost any other profession and at least deserve what the PTs, OTs, DATs, AudDs, PharmDs, DNPs and others achieve for their many hours spent learning. Especially when most PA doctorates will be earned for even many more hours with on the job clinical training with a leadership and/or educational emphasis.

You are an insurance company. For decades, you have let all other professions know that people who practice on a doctoral level will have a much easier job being credentialed for reimbursement than those with Master’s degrees. I am the company and in some cases, unfortunately, I get to choose. Why not do what again has been the customary and usual way to measure a professional’s competence? Ask if they have a doctorate. PTs, OTs, audiologists, dentists and others have found this out. So will we.

You are a legislator and PAs are coming in asking for full practice. Or let’s bring it down a notch. The legislators realize you can write orders for other professions. PT, OT, speech therapy, order different therapies. You can over-ride a pharmacist in some ways as the prescription you write needs to be filled by them. At the hospital, you write “orders” (poor team based word) for nurses, nutritionists and others. Sooner or later the logical question will be; “How can you expect as a Master’s prepared professional to tell four doctorates what to do?” One profession or another will balk.

In many states, the podiatrist is now the podiatric physician, the optometrist is the optometric physician, the chiropractor, the chiropractic physician. Yes, they changed it to help elevate their status. This is not going away. The problem is the law says you are a physician(’s) assistant. To any patient who has not analyzed the situation, PAs have a problem as our scope of practice is and will continue to be more comprehensive than the above professionals. Yet to insurance companies, legislators, Medicare and patients it would be logical that you would be “assisting” them. A doctorate would help even the playing field and aid in understanding we do much more than what our title says. So would a title change, but that’s another conversation not for today.

This is not about “If you wanted to be a doctor, you should have gone to medical school.” This is very much about a profession that either fits into the 21st century and recognizes that it is no longer 1975, or a profession that will stay misunderstood and undervalued for what they bring to the table. It is very much about a train that has left the station. Ask the Pharmacist, or the dentist, or the psychologist, or the chiropractor, or the DPT, or the DNP or the AudD if they want to be physicians? The answer will be “No, why?” Why would PAs not want to be PAs educated to the highest level they could be?

Let me tell you, twenty years ago I thought wanting a doctorate was more ego than anything else. It had no place in MY clinical world. It would not get me a larger paycheck. I became a PA in part to show the world that “non-doctors” could deliver the same care as “doctors” did. I know how good we are and never wanted to take a boat the Caribbean to become a physician. I bleed PA blue. I thought only academic PAs and NPs needed doctorates. But times change. Professions change. People change. We are, like it or not, part of many professions that practice in the same space or close spaces and if we are expected to advance, we had better at least consider change. Especially when we are the only profession ignoring that change. Again, ten years from now, we will be the “odd ones”. Realize, we are not making the rules, only following the rules followed by almost all other professions on this one. Healthcare changes. Professions change and like it or not, we must change also.

I have also never met a PA (or NP) who has obtained a doctorate who has not said that it made them a better all-around clinician. It filled in some holes. It gave them greater understanding and appreciation. I hear these sentiments often. I believe them.

Realize the transition for the PA profession to become a doctorate profession will take decades. It will hardly effect most PAs practicing today unless they are in their first decade or second decade of practice. Some of them may have to eventually do “at work, on the job” bridge programs. The NP profession has tried to push the doctorate as the initial degree earned at graduation from NP school with mixed results. We should learn from them. Keep programs at a Master’s level adding clinical doctorates earned by more clinical experience plus an emphasis on other tracks. NPs are already feeling some positives from their shift. Doctorates are opening doors. Doctorates are giving them seats at the table. Doctorates give more understanding to topics not stressed in NP school. Doctorates open eyes.

Doctorates are not needed because those professions need to compete with, or want to “be” physicians, but because it seems professions eventually need to let the public, legislators, insurance companies and other health professionals know that their postgraduate education offers the level of education and sophistication needed to take on the responsibility they have. Doctorates give that guarantee.

Eventually, PAs will realize the same thing.


Dave Mittman has been a PA and later NP leader for thirty years. He co-founded the LIU PA Program student society, was President of the New York State Society of PAs from 1978-1979 and served on the American Academy of Physician Assistants (AAPA) Board of Directors from 1981-1983. Dave was also the first USAF Reserves PA permitted to practice. Dave spent 9 years in primary care in Brooklyn, N.Y. and left to begin a career in medical publishing with Physician Assistant Journal. Dave has also won the AAPA Public Education award for leading the march in Trenton NJ to establish PA practice. Dave left PA Journal to co-found Clinicians Publishing Group (1990) and Clinician Reviews Journal in 1991. Dave has authored papers in publications as diverse as “Chicken Soup for the Expectant Mothers Soul”, “U.S. Pharmacist”, “The British Medical Journal” and others. Dave¹s paper in the BMJ was the first internationally written paper written on PA practice. Dave and a few very close PA colleagues co-founded the PAs For Tomorrow”” in 2012 which is a new national professional organization representing and advocating for PAs in an different way. Dave as spoken at hundreds of NP and PA meetings and always has some interesting thoughts on the future of both professions. Most recently Dave has been busy launching another dream; Clinician 1, the first internet community for PAs and NPs. Dave is married to his sweetheart Bonnie for 32 years and has two wonderful children.