Did You Know.....
by Ron Pace,PA-C

I attended the Southeast Regional Meeting in Atlanta a few days ago. It was a good meeting and I think I learned a few things that will help me in my position as FAPA President. One of the lectures was given by Steven Crane, the Executive Vice President of the AAPA. Steve has been with the Academy for years and is a wealth of knowledge about the PA profession. I have heard him talk on several occasions over the years and he never ceases to amaze me. His presentation this time was on a statistical analysis of PAs in the U.S. with an emphasis on those of us in the Southeast Region. I thought I would share some of those with you.

The American Academy has been doing a survey of graduate physician assistants and PA programs since it’s’ inception over twenty years ago and thus they have a sizeable database to draw on for statistical analysis. And they look at these figures six ways from Sunday each year. Here are a few of those for you to review from the 2002 survey.

There are some 57,752 persons that were eligible to practice as a PA from 1982-2002 in the United States as of 11/14/02. There are some 462 deceased PAs, and 610 retired PAs. With current trends we will have 63,486 PAs by 2004, and 104,786 by 2014. How do we compare in numbers to other health professionals? There are 750,000 physicians in the U.S... There are 106,000 nurse practitioners, but only 53% of them are in clinical practice which means there are 56,180 NPs in practice compared to us. But there are 2.4 million nurses in the U.S. Just remember this – a nurse is a nurse, is a nurse, is a nurse. Overall there are 13 million health care workers in the U.S. So by numbers alone, we are just a drop in the bucket. But we are in influential drop in reality. PAs now are a major role in many areas of medicine, including policy making on a national and state level.

Of this 57,752 PAs now eligible to practice, 45% of them graduated within the past five years. That just astounded me. 78% of PAs are in clinical practice, 10% are part-time, and 12% are not in clinical practice. That means 45,046 PAs are in clinical practice on a full time basis now. A further breakdown indicates that 4.5% of PAs have gone on to become physicians, and primarily osteopathic physicians. 5.8% are jointly certified as NPs and PAs. 7.5% are in academics, and 16% are in the pharmaceutical industry. And 57% of those PAs in current practice are female and 43% are male. And one figure that was very interesting was that only 1.5% of the PA profession is unemployed when compared to 5-6% of the general population. That means our profession is very healthy.

When questioned if they would do it again, 90% of our profession said yes, with 52% a definite yes, and 38% a probably yes. Of the 10% who said they would not do it again, 8% said probably not, and only 2% said no way again. Some similar studies in physicians indicate a much, much lower job satisfaction rate. Why? The average PA works 44.6 hours per week and the physician is in the 60-65 hour per week range. We have time for a more normal life and other activities outside of medicine which leads to a greater job satisfaction.

Of those PAs in clinical practice, 70% see outpatients only and just 7% do inpatient only. 21% do joint inpatient and outpatient, and about 1% do nursing homes alone. The figures also indicate that less PAs are going into Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine and more are going into Dermatology and Internal Medicine and its’ many subspecialties.

There are some studies that indicate PAs see 183,000,000 patient visits per year, and we write some 233,000,000 prescriptions per year which represents some 10% of all prescriptions written. Let’s see, 45,046 PAs compared to 750,000 physicians and some 56,180 NPS, for a total of 45,046 PAs compared to 806,180 physicians/NPs. That means there are some 851,226 physicians/PAs/NPs which makes us total 5.2% of the provider population in that respect, but we write 10% of the prescriptions in the U.S. Draw your own conclusions on that one.

The students are the future of our profession. There are now 128 fully accredited PA programs in the U.S. There are 166 applicants average per class now. The pool is decreasing in size due to the increased number of programs. 68% of PA students are female, and 32% are male. The average age is 28 years old and the average PA student has 4.5 years of health care worker experience. When I was in school in 19XX, the average age was 31 and the average experience level was eleven years.

Of graduate PAs now out there, 51.2% have a Bachelor’s Degree, 20.1% have a Masters level degree, 38.6 % have a certificate level degree, and 8.6% have an Associate Degree. But the shift is toward the Master’s Degree with 41% or programs now offering Masters Degree in some form. In clinical medicine positions, having a Master’s degree does not really statistically have any effect on salary. However in non-clinical positions it may have a significant affect on salary. Speaking of salary, in the U.S. the average graduate PA makes $72,246 per year. A family medicine PA makes about $70,000,. But there is a wide range of salaries in the PA field ranging from in the 50’s range to the 150,000 range. A new graduate makes an average of $63,254. A PA salary is about 40% of what a family medicine physician makes, and only 23% of surgical physicians. The increased demand for PAs has led to an increase in salary expected due to the competition. And taking call adds about 15% to the base pay depending on the amount of call you are expected to take.

So what is the take home message in all this? It is great to be a PA today. Our profession has only a 1.5% unemployment rate. PAs are greatly accepted by organized medicine, though here in Florida with the practice restrictions we have due to the greatly conservative approach to medicine by organized medicine, the acceptance is certainly less than in other more progressive areas of the country. We have an unmatched 90% job satisfaction rate. Our salaries continue to grow at a larger rate than the inflation rate. We are going to see a great increase in the number of hospital based practices in the next few years. And PAs are flexible because we are trained in the medical module and can fit more easily into specialty niches. All in all, our future is quite bright.