Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants: An Underestimated Workforce for Older Adults with Cancer.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To describe the composition of the US provider workforce for adults with cancer older than 65 years and to determine whether there were differences in patients who received care from different providers (eg, nurse practitioners [NPs], physician assistants [PAs], and specialty physicians).

Design

Observational, cross-sectional study.

Setting

Adults within the 2013 Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results cancer registries linked to the Medicare claims database.

Participants

Medicare beneficiaries who received ambulatory care for any solid or hematologic malignancies.

Measurements

International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision (ICD-9), diagnosis codes were used to identify Medicare patient claims for malignancies in older adults. Pr

SUBMITTER: Coombs LA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6612567 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature