Providers (was: well-endowed)

[Laurence Horn]

At 2:38 PM -0700 5/26/05, Peter A. McGraw wrote:
>(Or should I say, "were: well-endowed"?)
>
>"Provider" is one of those words I'm sick and tired of hearing, and I'll be
>glad when they go on to the next fad and this one becomes "SO early 2000s."
>I guess one reason it irks me is that I don't understand the motivation for
>it.  Is it being pushed by companies like Kaiser, whose strategy is to keep
>you away from an M.D. for as long as possible, so they want to promote the
>idea that "physician's assistants," etc., can help you just as well as an
>M.D. because they're both "providers"?  Or by the trade associations of
>"providers" who aren't M.D.s?  Can someone enlighten me?
>
>Peter Mc.
>
>(Who, when he's sick, wants to see a "doctor," dammit!)

Well, there are some advantages to doing so--in particular, they're
the only providers who are also prescribers.  At our university
health plan, I assume the motivation is indeed because for many
patients the "primary" (as it ends up getting abbreviated to) is a
nurse-practitioner, including some of the nurse-midwives in OB-GYN.
In other words, it's similar to the motivation for using "instructor"
rather than "professor" in many instructional-related materials in
academia.

larry

>
>--On Thursday, May 26, 2005 2:18 PM -0700 Ed Keer <edkeer at YAHOO.COM> wrote:
>
>>Thanks Larry, I just spent a half hour turning all the
>>"doctors" in a heart brochure I'm writing into
>>"healthcare providers". Fun!
>
>
>
>*****************************************************************
>Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
>******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************