Table 3. Clinician and Next-Day Appointment Availability.
Appointment | No./Total No. (%) [95% CI] | P value | |
---|---|---|---|
Calls to PE-owned clinics | Calls to control clinics | ||
First appointment offered with an NPCa | 201/395 (51) [46-56] | 301/765 (39) [36-43] | .01 |
Next-day appointmentb | |||
Any clinician type | 127/419 (30) [26-35] | 163/765 (21) [19-24] | .001 |
MD/DO onlya | 61/395 (15) [12-19] | 97/765 (13) [11-15] | .16 |
Appointments | |||
Available with NPCsa,c | 267/335 (80) [75-84] | 421/668 (63) [59-67] | .001 |
Not available with MD/DOa | 62/395 (16) [12-20] | 48/765 (6) [5-8] | <.001 |
Abbreviations: NPC, nonphysician clinicians; PE, private equity.
Denominator excludes 24 calls to 11 PE clinics without dermatologist availability according to their website.
For calls placed on Friday, February 28, 2020 (1.6% of all placed calls), Monday, March 2, 2020, was used to calculate next-day appointment availability.
To maintain consistency in our call script, we were not able to inquire about NPC availability on calls that offered a next-day appointment with a dermatologist. These calls (n = 61 and n = 97 for PE-owned and control, respectively) were thus excluded from the analysis of appointments available with NPCs.