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Nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other midlevel providers can help expand the availability of psychiatric services
As the gap widens between the need for mental services and the availability of psychiatrists, consequently, demand for "physician extenders" has increased significantly. Across the country, nurse practitioners (NPs), advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), and in some cases, physician assistants (PAs), are taking on more of the psychiatric case load.
The availability of these midlevel providers can be invaluable, says Joe Parks, MD, medical director at the National Council for Behavioral Health.
Parks also practices psychiatry at the Family Health Center, a federally funded community health center (CMHC) in central Missouri, where an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and three behavioral healthcare consultants have allowed him to serve roughly eight times as many people than he could if he were treating them himself.
"We will never meet everybody's needs seeing all of the patients ourselves," Parks says.
By utilizing the advanced practice nurse, he can spend less time doing routine medication refills, for example, and spend more time with patients who require an in-person consultation. Before, patients waited months to see a psychiatrist.
"In this way I'm always operating much closer to the top of my credentials," Parks says. "It's a different kind of work for me. I work harder. I'm able to see many more people and it has really changed my practice."
Nurse practitioners are playing a key role in extending access to mental health and substance use treatment services, but how they are utilized varies by state. According to the National Council, 21 states and the District of Columbia give NPs full practice authority so that they can diagnose, treat, order diagnostic tests and prescribe to patients without physician oversight. In other states, NPs must work in collaborative practices under the direction of a supervising psychiatrist. Other states restrict NPs ability to prescribe certain medications.
Physician assistants are also emerging as a potential source of help for psychiatric practices. In a paper published in March, titled "The Psychiatric Shortage: Causes and Solutions," the National Council wrote that "PAs with specialty psychiatric training are a relatively new development that has tremendous potential for expansion. Since their duration of training is the shortest of the psychiatric prescribers, they...