Provider Type and Quality of Outpatient Cardiovascular Disease Care Implications for the Affordable Care Act: Insights from the NCDR®PINNACLE Registry

摘要

INTRODUCTIONThe current number of physicians will not be sufficient to accommodate 30–40 million Americans expected to secure health care coverage with Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation. One proposed solution is to utilize non-physicians (nurse practitioners [NPs] and physician assistants [PAs]) for chronic disease care delivery. It is not known whether the quality of outpatient cardiology care delivered by non-physicians is comparable to that delivered by physicians.