Potential Role for Assistant Physicians in Addressing the Physician Shortage

Given the fixed supply of residency training slots, pathways to increasing physician supply are limited. We assess use of the novel assistant physician (AP) status and the early impact of regulatory changes in Missouri. We find limited impacts of APs on supply, with a substantial majority (80.2%) of licensed APs not reporting a practice address and declining numbers of new licenses in recent years. We discuss implications and potential changes to increase health care supply through an AP pathway.