It’s been a tough time for the healthcare industry. Across the board, medical practices and health systems have been struggling financially since the beginning of the pandemic, due to issues like staffing shortages, supply chain disruptions, inflation and high labor costs.
“The cost to recruit and retain mental healthcare providers is on the rise,” says Dr. Ryan J. Wakim, a board- certified psychiatrist, distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and chief medical officer at Transformations Care Network, a national network of outpatient mental healthcare clinics.
Given these financial challenges, it’s a great time to look at what hiring advanced practice providers (APPs) can do for medical practices. Industry players have been ramping up the hiring of APPs for years.
On Zocdoc, 45 percent of large medical groups, 34 percent of health systems and 25 percent of small practices use APPs, which include nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs). Zocdoc data shows that providers that use APPs have widely increased patient availability and retention rates.
On average, in 2022, practices that used APPs had more than double the patient availability over 90 days, compared to practices that don’t use them. Practices with APPs also received 72 percent more bookings than their counterparts over 90 days.
Further data shows:
- Primary care practices that use APPs had 297 percent more availability over 90 days than those that don’t.
- Psychiatry practices that use APPs had 465 percent more availability.
- Dermatology practices that use APPs had 231 percent more availability.
“APPs on my team are very autonomous, highly effective and the only way we are able to serve the patients we serve, especially in the field of psychiatry,” Wakim says.