Clinical Conversations

December 6th, 2019

Podcast 245: We revisit a 2018 episode on NPs’, PAs’, and MDs’ performance in the primary care of diabetes

In November 2018 we interviewed two authors of an Annals of Internal Medicine study comparing the quality of diabetes care afforded by three provider types: nurse-practitioners, PAs, and MDs. They reported that there were no clinically significant differences in the intermediate outcomes — glycated hemoglobin, systolic pressure, or low-density lipoprotein cholesterol — among the groups. We’re […]

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November 28th, 2018

Podcast 225: Managing diabetes in primary care — are there quality differences among NPs, PAs, and MDs?

Does the diabetes care afforded by NPs and PAs match that of MDs? According to a careful analysis among Veterans Affairs patients there are no clinical differences in intermediate outcomes — hemoglobin A1c, systolic pressure, or LDL cholesterol. The principal and senior authors of that analysis are our guests this time. Links: Annals of Internal Medicine study (free […]

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July 19th, 2018

Podcast 222: Growing prominence of NPs in primary care

This time we talk with Dr. Hilary Barnes, first author of a Health Affairs paper: “Rural and Nonrural Primary Care Physician Practices Increasingly Rely on Nurse Practitioners.” I thought listeners might want to know more about the dramatic change in the way primary care is acquiring, in Barnes’s words, an “increasing interdisciplinary character.” Health Affairs abstract

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