Recent studies show increasing the physician assistant and nurse practitioner workforce may help combat the looming physician shortage, according to MedPage Today.
Here are three things to know:
1. The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates the nation may face a shortage between 40,800 and 104,900 physicians by 2020.
2. If the industry upped NPs' and PAs' workforce by an average of 6 percent, this would result in a surplus of 15,000 visits per full-time equivalent physician by 2030, based on estimates by Chapel Hill-based University of North Carolina's Sheps Center for Health Services Research.
3. Over a six-year period through 2015, the NP field increased by 10 percent. Between 2014 and 2015, the NP workforce increased 20.3 percent.