Phoenix Physician Assistant (PA) Malpractice Lawyers
A Phoenix Physician Assistant (PA) Malpractice Attorney Who Knows The Medicine
Over the last few years healthcare corporations and insurance companies have been eager and willing to disregard patient safety in order to maximize profits. The biggest obstacle to their zealous profitability has always been the physician. A medical doctor has to complete a four-year undergraduate program, another four years in medical school, and then three to seven years in a residency program. On average, it takes 11 to 15 years to become a doctor.
The reason for all of this time and training is because that is what is required to do healthcare right. Yet, the healthcare corporations and insurance companies soon realized if they were willing to sacrifice patient safety they could bypass medical doctors altogether: enter the midlevel provider.
A midlevel provider can be, among others, a Physician Assistant (PA), Nurse Practitioner (NP), or a Nurse Anesthetist (CRNA). These midlevel providers do not attend medical school and receive far less schooling and clinical hours than a physician. As an example, whereas a doctor undergoes 11 to 14 years of schooling, a nurse practitioner only has to complete a four-year undergraduate nursing program and a two-year masters degree in nursing, for a total of six years. With that background a nurse practitioner is able to practice medicine independently without a medical doctor's supervision in Arizona. A nurse practitioner, after six years, can now legally prescribe medication, diagnose illnesses, and treat patients directly. To put that in perspective it takes longer to become a lawyer (7 years) than it does to become a nurse practitioner (6 years) and yet one profession has life or death hanging in the balance.
So why in the last decade have patients started to see that they are being pushed towards midlevel providers instead of doctors? Profitability. Healthcare corporations and insurance companies have realized that they can make more money if patients see nurse practitioners and physician assistants even if, at the end of the day, those patients are not being given proper medical care. Has the push towards midlevels saved patients money? Of course not. Rather the push towards midlevels has never been about charging the patient less for poor quality healthcare. Rather the push has been towards charging the patient more for less.
As a medical doctor, Dr. Shah knows all too well the grave risk patients are facing as the healthcare system pushes these patients away from seeing physicians. Dr. Shah is fluent in the language of medicine and has spent most of his life reading the charts, x-rays, CT scans, and MRIs that will be the foundation of your case and is more than able to spot when and where a physician assistant (PA) has committed medical malpractice. If you or a loved one has been hurt or killed by a physician assistant's failures, Dr. Shah would like to hear your story.