Nurse practitioners key to increasing health care access in less advantaged areas, study shows

Medical Xpress February 28, 2025
Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Primary care practices that employ nurse practitioners (NPs) are more likely to serve socioeconomically disadvantaged communities than practices with no NPs on staff, Columbia University School of Nursing researchers report in JAMA Network Open. Assistant Professor Monica O’Reilly-Jacob, Ph.D., led the study, published online February 28, 2025.

To better understand the distribution of NPs—who are increasingly critical to improving access to primary care—O’Reilly-Jacob and her colleagues looked at 79,743 primary care practices across the U.S., 53.4% of which employed NPs in 2023. The authors note that this is a big jump from 2012, when 21% of primary care practices employed NPs.

Practices with NPs were more likely to be based in low-income (23.3% vs. 17.2%) and rural (11.9% vs. 5.5%)...