The demand for temporary physician assistants and nurse practitioners is growing rapidly, according to a survey by Staff Care, a national temporary healthcare staffing firm.
From October 2012 to February 2013, researchers polled healthcare executives and medical group managers about their use of temporary physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants.
The survey indicates that requests for temporary physician assistants and nurse practitioners grew from less than 2 percent in 2010 to 10 percent of all requests in 2012.
Other significant findings of the survey are:
• Seventy-four percent of healthcare facility managers said that their facilities had used temporary physicians or advanced practitioners sometime in the last year.
• Of the 74 percent, 35 percent had used primary care physicians and 10 percent had used temporary physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
• Fifty-eight percent of respondents indicated that used temporary clinicians to fill in for clinicians who had left their organization.
• Eighty-five percent of respondents reported that temporary clinicians are worth the cost.
• Forty-three percent of healthcare facilities now use telemedicine in at least one of their departments, to supplement physician shortage.
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