Online Program

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Tuesday, January 7
Tue, Jan 7, 11:00 AM - 12:45 PM
Porthole
Health Policy Methods for Medicare and Medicaid

WITHDRAWN - A Comparison Study on Quality of Care and Practice Patterns of Primary Care Physicians, Nurse Practitioners, and Physician Assistants for Medicaid Patients in New York (307882)

Shen Wang, Center for Health Workforce Studies 
*Shen Wang, Center for Health Workforce Studies 

Keywords: Medicaid, Quality of Care, Practice Patterns, Primary Care, PCMD, NP, PA

Objective: To compare the quality of care and practice patterns of primary care physicians (PCMDs), nurse practitioners (NPs), and physician assistants (PAs) in ambulatory care settings in New York.

Methods: Using 23 million NY Medicaid claims data from 2016-2018, multivariate regression analyses were conducted to estimate the impact of receiving NP/PA-provided primary care versus PCMD-provided ones. Design-based and model-based methods with weighted estimates were utilized to test on 7 key outcome variables in software SPSS and HLM, respectfully. Predictive modeling was also used to estimate the probability of each outcome occurring among PCMDs, NPs, and PAs.

Results: Primary care services provided by NP/PAs were largely equivalent to those provided by PCMDs. Medicaid patients seen by NPs were more likely to receive smoking cessation treatments than those seen by PCMDs (P=0.05), and patients seen by PAs were more likely to receive ultrasound services and referrals than those seen by PCMDs (P=0.01).

Conclusions: The comparable findings suggest that greater use of NPs and PAs is unlikely to have a surprising effect on primary care and may improve primary care in certain areas.