This week, New York adopted Full Practice Authority (FPA) legislation, enabling nurse practitioners (NPs) to provide the full scope of services they are educated and clinically trained to provide. This means NPs in New York will now be able to evaluate, test, diagnose, and prescribe medications for patients without having to sign a contract agreement with a supervising physician.
This news comes after a recent study completed by Havas Media Group and MedSurvey which reveals the growing influence of non-MD Healthcare Providers (HCPs) on prescribing decisions. In 2022, physicians make up less than 10% of the interactions with patients during office visits, while Physician Assistants (PAs) and Registered Nurses (RNs) comprise more than half, with Nurse Practitioners at 19%.
Moreover, in the next 8 years, NPs are expected to grow by 52%, and by 2025, PAs are projected to grow by a rate of 34%. Meanwhile, the number of primary care physicians is only growing at 4%. This growth discrepancy is why both NPs and PAs can write prescriptions in all 50 states and currently write more than a billion prescriptions annually.
Given these results and the recent Full Practice Authority in NY, it is more imperative than ever for healthcare brands, agencies, and marketers to understand the role non-MD healthcare providers play in treatment and product choices.
While most solutions only prioritize reaching MD level providers, at Lasso we anticipated the more influential role that NPs and PAs would play in the patient journey. That’s why in August of 2021, we announced our exclusive partnership with POCN, the largest Nurse Practitioner and Physician Associate network in the U.S., making specialty-focused NP & PA data available to marketers for the first time ever.
POCN Specialty™ is built on the only database informed by the real-time clinical diagnostic, treatment, and prescribing behavior of 400,000 NPs and PAs. Today, these audiences are available exclusively on the Lasso platform. For healthcare marketers, the launch of POCN Specialty on the Lasso platform means more targeted access and increased relevance of messaging to some of the most important decision-makers in the patient journey.
Additionally, custom NP & PA segments can be built using Lasso Blueprint™, the world’s first and only HCP & consumer audience builder made for healthcare. Blueprint leverages medical claims data to create privacy safe and opted-in audiences based on any combination of diagnoses, procedures, medications, demographics, and insurance information.
All of these specialty NP & PA audiences can be seamlessly activated across all programmatic, social, and email channels from one place - the Lasso Platform. By bridging the gap between healthcare marketing and these under-appreciated decision-makers, Lasso and POCN are improving communication and product education which will inevitably lead to better outcomes for patients.
If you’re ready to target influential NP and PA audiences today, contact your Lasso client services representative or send an email to sales@lassomarketing.io to learn more.
