Please don’t call us “providers.” 

In a position paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, a group of physicians argue that the term lumps them with businesses such as insurance companies and hospitals and clinicians with less training than MDs. 

“With the ongoing attacks on physicians, science, our very profession, it needs to really be reinforced how offensive, dehumanizing, and deprofessionalizing the term provider is,” said Jason Goldman, MD, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP), in an interview. 

Physicians undergo extensive training and make complex evaluations of patients to determine the best mode of treatment, a notable difference from an entity that ‘provides’ a service, according to the paper from the ACP. 

“The physician must act in the patient’s best interests, even when it is counter to the physician’s own interests or conflicts,” the paper states. “The mission of hospitals was once aligned with and supported the ethical duties of physicians to serve the needs of patients first and to avoid commercialism, but that role has often been compromised.” 

The position comes as patients are increasingly receiving care from nurse practitioners and physician assistants. The term lumps physicians with clinicians such as nurses and physician assistants, who need less training to practice, the paper states. 

“Every person in the care team has a unique role and they should be referred to by that role,” Goldman said. 

Nisha Mehta, MD, a radiologist in Charlotte, North Carolina, said calling everyone on a care team a “provider” can make it difficult to keep track of where patients received information. 

Because a patient often sees many workers as part of their care –– nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, and specialists during a series of appointments — “it’s becoming increasingly important that patients understand who they have seen and what their level of training is and to understand that in the context of their care,” she said. “That’s not meant in any way to diminish anyone else’s training.” 

Clinicians who are not physicians often are the first, and sometimes the only, healthcare professionals to see a patient during an office or telehealth visit. Because physicians generally cost more to employ than other clinicians, attempts by clinics or hospital administrators to blur distinctions between those roles, “you have to wonder what the motivation behind that effort is and whether it’s motivated by finances and not patient care,” Mehta said. 

She added that more efforts should go toward educating the public on the roles, expertise, and education levels of each person they may see during a visit. 

“I don’t necessarily think it needs to happen within the healthcare visit, I think we could get to a point where the public does understand the difference between roles,” she said. 

Mehta said social media videos have further clouded the distinction between medical experts with different titles. 

“Patients need to fully understand when someone is coming to them saying that they are an expert in their field, what their expertise is,” Mehta said. “I should know if someone who is giving me information completed a weekend course on a topic or an entire residency.” 

Kaitlin Sullivan is a freelance journalist living in Colorado.