Does Expanded State Scope of Practice for Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants Increase Primary Care Utilization in Community Health Centers?

Jeongyoung Park, et al., found that granting independent practice and prescriptive authority for  nurse practitioners (NP) resulted in statistically significant increases in NP visits and decreases in both physician assistant (PA) and primary care provider visits, for community health centers with a high proportion of NPs and PAs along with the increased provision of support staff. PA scope of practice liberalization had no statistically significant effect on PA visits. Read article