title: Health problems encountered by nurse practitioners and physicians in general medicine clinics.
abstract: Distribution of health problems encountered by nurse practitioners and physicians in general/adult medicine clinics was studied. Proportional samples by clinics were selected from a total of 13,039 patient visits made to four clinics during an 18-week period in 1978. A Patient Encounter Form was used as the instrument and the ICD-9-CM as the coding system. Results showed that (a) 25.1% of the 13,039 patient visits were made to the nurse practitioners and 74.9% to the physicians, (b) 23 frequently reported health problems constituted more than 50% of all health problems seen by both provider groups, and (c) health problems with V codes constituted less than 30% of all health problems seen by both provider groups. Many similarities in health problems seen by nurse practitioners and physicians may indicate that nurse practitioners in the general/adult medicine specialty are used more to substitute for physicians in managing selected health problems than to complement medical practice.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D004194:Disease / Q000145:classification; D005194:Family Practice; D005260:Female; D006262:Health; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D007087:Illinois; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009722:Nurse Practitioners / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012737:Sex Factors; D013223:Statistics as Topic