Free Essay about the Purpose, Methods Results, and Discussion of the Assigned Study

Both Nurse Practitioners and Primary Care Physicians work in a coalition. However, research states that NP achieves more significant clinical results and patient satisfaction as compared to Primary care physicians. The study "Comparing the Cost of Care Provided to Medicare Beneficiaries Assigned to Primary Care Nurse Practitioners and Physicians' explains this scenario.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Purpose

The assigned study's primary objective was to examine and assess the charges of services provided by NPs to the beneficiaries of Medicare about those offered by primary care to those beneficiaries. All the billings were done using the clinicians' NPI numbers (Perloff et al., 2016).

Methods

For the study, several methods like sampling, attribution, and analysis were used for accessing and finding a comparison between the payments made by Medicare to its beneficiaries under the care NPs and physicians (Perloff et al., 2016). Sampling was done in two steps. One randomly took the clinicians who have NPIs and, the other gathered all those who benefited from their services in 2009 and 2010.

Attribution - each beneficiary was linked to a physician and an NPS, the study used an evaluation system. Another method was dependent variables - breaking down the amount paid by Medicare to a beneficiary into chunks. For primary care, this amount was seen to increase as the recipient shifted toward the office setting from the inpatient. To assess this, the cost was divided into three parts, Part A being of all that paid to inpatient and Part B representing that paid to clinicians, and lastly the other is the amount for E&M.

Independent Variables - due to the difference in health care cost per region, the beneficiaries' zip codes in their medical files were used. Due to demographic controls, these variables were also added, age was taken regarding year, sex specifically female, and race mostly white. Analysis - this includes an in-depth assessment of the differences between beneficiaries regarding, age, gender, race, dual eligibility, and the reason behind one's entitlement (Perloff et al., 2016).

Results

The results of the study were evident. An analysis of a 2010 sample shows that 928,440 patients were provided with cost group A and B, 558,199 were assigned to clinicians (Perloff et al., 2016). The remaining were either unassigned or given special care. Those assigned to NPs were majorly non-whites, youths, of the female gender, had dual eligibility, and lived in the remote area. Chances were that they might have qualified as beneficiaries because they were either impaired or had any dangerous disease (Perloff et al., 2016).

Discussion

The study was aimed at finding the difference in cost of services offered by either NPs or primary care physicians to Medicate beneficiaries assigned to them. This comparison was to be done by examining those who were attended to by medical practitioners within 12 months, under the benefits of Medicare. For that reason, clinicians were to account for not less than thirty percent of E&M services.

The results of this examination showed that Medicare paid amounts for NP assigned beneficiaries were lower than those of physicians. This covered both office-based setting and inpatient. The set period of the 12-month examination gave room for a comprehensive, understanding, and review of the cost of the care provided by NPs. Although, shorter time spans produced the same results. However, this approach provides a basis for assessing the primary care benefits over week or months and not just days. However, the main limitation is that some NPs do not bill directly to Medicare, so the data analyzed may not apply to all NPs (Perloff et al., 2016).

My Opinion

The article outlines that the cost of medical care for the beneficiaries assigned NPs in comparison to those assigned to PCMDs. This is seen in both inpatient and office-based setting. Therefore, there is a need for an increase in NP primary care for the Medicare program as it will reduce the cost of healthcare.

Reference

Perloff, J, DesRoches C, M, & Buerhaus, P. (2016). Comparing the Cost of Care Provided to Medicare Beneficiaries Assigned to Primary Care Nurse Practitioners and Physicians. Elsevier Health Sciences. Health Research and Educational Trust.