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> skip employing doctors at all in favor of nurse practitioners

Hold up. I hope you're not being negative on hiring NPs. As someone who is in favor of NPs (and knows many NPs), they provide excellent primary care and hiring them can help bring down the overall cost of healthcare. I say we should teach and hire MORE NPs to provide cheaper primary and preventative care, not blame clinics for hiring them.

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This, and exactly this. NP's are great for the run-of-the-mill sicknesses and minor injuries that most adults and children get. In conjunction with a PCP, they provide excellent primary care even for more complicated patients.

In addition, specialist nurses are a great addition to a specialist's team. I don't see a neurologist all that often, but I have checkups with one of the team of wonderful nurses at the office, some of which specialize in the disease I have. It works out wonderfully and allows the specialist to take care of more patients and still provide pretty wonderful service.

I am not, I'm just stating the fact that they are replacing physicians, mainly due to costs. I'm struggling to see how you read into that statement a negative tone on the matter.

FWIW, my partner was an NP before leaving direct patient care.

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