March 14, 2023
The SAVE Act, introduced in the General Assembly recently, increases the risk of poor health outcomes and patient experiences from nurses delivering care without physician involvement.
Physicians and nurses are both important members of your health care team, but they are not interchangeable. The SAVE Act (HB 218/SB 175) would drastically change current law by removing physician involvement from patient care. Studies show that the lack of physician involvement is likely to lead to higher costs and worse patient outcomes.
The National Bureau of Economic Research released a Stanford study in October 2022 highlighting the difference in the quality of care between nurse practitioners and physicians in Veterans Health Administration emergency departments. The study finds that nurse practitioners achieve worse health outcomes than physicians.
The federal study states, “compared to physicians, NPs [nurse practitioners] use more medical resources: They require longer lengths of stay and incur higher costs. However, they achieve less favorable patient outcomes, as measured by 30-day preventable hospitalizations.”
Another study from the Hattiesburg Clinic in Mississippi reviewed 10 years of quality and cost data of patients receiving care from nurse practitioners as compared to primary care physicians. An examination of this cost data for the clinic revealed that care provided by nonphysician providers working on their own patient panels was more expensive than care delivered by doctors.
The 2017-2019 CMS cost data on Medicare patients showed that per-member, per-month spending was $43 higher for patients whose primary care professional was a nonphysician instead of a doctor. This could translate to $10.3 million more in spending annually if all patients were followed by nonphysicians, according to the analysis. When risk-adjusted for patient complexity, the difference was $119 per member, per month, or $28.5 million annually.
The NC Patient Safety Coalition is an alliance of medical professionals that advocate for physician-led health care that protects patient safety. Learn more on our website at www.ncpatientsafety.com, and follow us on Twitter @NCPatientSafety and Facebook www.facebook.com/NCPatientSafety.
