Words matter.
About 10 to 15 years ago. depending on the healthcare system we physicians were affiliated with, we started to see the ubiquitous use of the terms PCP ( Primary Care “Provider” ) and HCP ( ‘Healthcare “Provider”).
This was done with little fanfare with the presumptive explanation that it saved confusion over documenting separately for physicians and nurse practitioners.
It’s not clear how deliberate the decision was to create a new term and a new category for physicians.
In theory, it could have been a benign simplification started by the insurance companies to simplify their forms, a simplification which subsequently took on a momentum of its own.
But I doubt it.
There is a huge financial incentive to make physicians as interchangeable as possible with both nurse practitioners and physician’s assistants.
Also, there is a significant appeal for corporations to not have a special class of employees working for them. The more they can democratize and equalize their workforce the better – providing, of course, it’s a nonvoting democracy.
So, can physicians reclaim their title and move away from the word provider?
The reality is no. If that battle could have been won, it should have been fought 15 years ago, and the term is now so embedded in our lexicon, our electronic health records, our websites, and our managers’ presentations, it will never change.
However, we should internally question the meaning of this word and continually ask ourselves, as physicians, if it really represents our true value.