Physician Assistants (PAs) are health providers that act as physician extenders, completing delegated tasks in multiple health care settings. There are 500 practicing PAs across Canada. Studies show that PAs increase access to care, manage episodic or deteriorating health, conditions, provide on-site services, conduct counseling and family meetings, and practice preventative medicine. Studies show that PAs can deliver similar, or even better outputs and outcomes for designated competencies. Working in both primary care and long term care settings, PAs have shown to reduce hospital admission rates by 38%, re-admission rates by 25% and ER visits by an average of 36%. There are over 19,000 Ontario seniors awaiting LTC placement, and the per capita cost of care for patients over 80 years of age is ten times that of patients < 65 years of age. In the Long Term Care and other health care settings, PAs can contribute significantly to improving both access to care and reduction of health care costs. Through the delegation of appropriate tasks through medical directives, PAs can alleviate excess demand for care placed on physicians time, and work collaboratively with multi-disciplinary teams working in LTC to enhance resident care. Peirone, Michael
|