Characteristics of primary care office visits to nurse practitioners, physician assistants and physicians in United States Veterans Health Administration facilities, 2005 to 2010:a retrospective cross-sectional analysis

Table 1 Comparison of 2010 VHA primary care encounter ^a characteristics by provider type

	Physician	Physician assistant	Nurse practitioner
Mean age (years)	63	61	62
Male (%)	93	93	90
Race or ethnicity (%)
Non-Hispanic white	58	61	58
Non-Hispanic black	14	13	14
Hispanic	6	3	4
Asian	1	1	1
American Indian	1	1	1
Unknown	21	21	22
Purpose of visit (%)
Scheduled clinic visit	92	86	90
Unscheduled visit	4	5	5
Physical examination to determine compensation and pension eligibility	3	8	5
Current Procedural Terminology (CPT^®) codes (%)
Evaluation and management, established patient	76	71	72
Evaluation and management, new patient	5	6	5
Immunization	7	6	6
Disability evaluation	3	8	5
Lifestyle counselling	2	1	2
Preventive medicine	1	2	1
Missing and other	6	6	8
Mean diagnostic cost group scores^b (s.d.)	0.89 (0.891)	0.82 (0.824)	0.84 (0.821)

^a Only visits to physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants were included.
^b DCG = diagnostic cost group, a comorbidity measure based on age, sex, and diagnoses over a one-year time period. Scores are standardized so that a value of one is the score of a typical Medicare patient.

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