A key to practice efficiency: Advantages of medical assistants

MAs can be the most versatile members of your staff -- if you know how to use them.

By Larry Stevens, AMNews correspondent. April 17, 2006.

According the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the fastest-growing health profession in the country -- the fastest-growing profession, period -- is medical assistant. Physicians such as Catherine Tabb, MD, are one reason why.

Dr. Tabb, a solo family physician in Louisville, Ohio, started practice in 1980 with one medical assistant. She now has three full-time and three part-time MAs. They're used for all tasks -- front, as well as back office -- not performed by her or the practice's single nurse practitioner.

Dr. Tabb likes the flexibility of staff who can assume either front- or back-office duties to make up for vacations or illness. But having people with clinical knowledge at the front desk, making them more useful to patients, is even better. "They can answer basic questions about taking medications without having to transfer the patient to me," she says. "They help patients decide if they need to come in."

Like most doctors who make extensive use of MAs for clinical tasks, Dr. Tabb believes she's in no financial position to hire nurses. But more than that, she says, they're not necessary, particularly when most of the clinical work can be handled by MAs.

Charles Reed, MD, a pediatrician with 12-doctor St. Christopher Pediatric Associates in Philadelphia, says MAs bring versatility atypical of other types of staff. "We can move them from office to office," he says. "We can use them for clinical tasks, and if we need to fill in, we can put them in the front office, registering patients and answering phones."