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General Practice medicine seems to come close enough. No differences in patient outcomes between physicians and nurse practitioners.

> Randomised controlled trial comparing cost effectiveness of general practitioners and nurse practitioners in primary care

> Results: Nurse practitioner consultations were significantly longer than those of the general practitioners (11.57 v 7.28 min; adjusted difference 4.20, 95% confidence interval 2.98 to 5.41), and nurses carried out more tests (8.7% v 5.6% of patients; odds ratio 1.66, 95% confidence interval 1.04 to 2.66) and asked patients to return more often (37.2% v 24.8%; 1.93, 1.36 to 2.73). There was no significant difference in patterns of prescribing or health status outcome for the two groups. Patients were more satisfied with nurse practitioner consultations (mean score 4.40 v 4.24 for general practitioners; adjusted difference 0.18, 0.092 to 0.257). This difference remained after consultation length was controlled for. There was no significant difference in health service costs (nurse practitioner £18.11 v general practitioner £20.70; adjusted difference £2.33, −£1.62 to £6.28).

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=do...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27348/



More tests isn’t a good things. The doctor was significantly quicker and could see 3 patients for every two the nurse saw.

I’m not sure where this leaves us, as the cheaper training cost for the nurse is a factor too.




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