PHYSICIANS ARE NOT “PROVIDERS”
Finally, someone besides me has taken offense at physicians being called providers. Since today’s world contains all levels of folks who take care of patients in one way or another, the generic, non-descript term provider came into popular use. So anyone from the heart surgeon to the critical care nurse to the physicians’ assistant was lumped into that broad category.
In a boldly presented “position statement” the American College of Physicians, the organization representing and advocating for internal medicine physicians, has rejected the term provider and the “deprofessionalization” of the medical profession it represents. The paper published in the February 2026 issue of The Annals of Internal Medicine objected to physicians being referred to as providers saying “with the ongoing attacks on physicians,…..it needs to really be reinforced how offensive, dehumanizing, and deprofessionalizing the term provider is.” The proliferation of physician’s assistants and nurse practitioners nationwide has placed them on a status equal to physicians who have many more years of training and experience. “Every person on the care team has a unique role, and they should be referred to by that role.” Thus a physician is “the doctor” and not a provider.
The essay found the term provider “ambiguous and disrespectful.” It referred to the practice of medicine as “an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business…..Medical care is not a mere service….the current use of provider in reference to institutions, insurers, physicians, nurses, PA’s, and other clinicians lumps impersonal entities in with humans and obscures differences in clinical training and expertise.” The ACP Ethics Manual says that “medicine is not a trade to be learned, but a profession to be entered.” The words physician and provider are not interchangeable. “Provider undermines the physician’s ethical obligations, clinical integrity, and accountability, as well as trust in the physician-patient relationship.
The important point of this essay was to re-establish the physician’s position as the leader of the medical care heirarchy and to distinguish them as the “adult in the room.” They are the producer and director of this movie and should be recognized as the knowledgeable one to whom all others are subordinate and are dependent.
Dr. G’s Opinion: Hooray for the American College of Physicians. I have also long disliked the term provider. In multi-specialty groups who employ every kind of health care deliverer imaginable, use of the term places everyone in the same stratum, which any honest PA, NP, RN, or MD will say it should not. It is also meant to prevent someone from feeling less important in the general sphere of medical treatment. Paradoxically, for physicians it does just that and should be removed from the health care vocabulary. Call a physician a physician, a nurse a nurse, and the hospital a hospital. Each has earned its name and reputation and should be referred to with the respect they deserve. The ACP deserves recognition for standing up for its “constituents” who Medicare and commercial payers constantly under-compensate and disrespect.
References: Sullivan K. Physicians are Not Providers, says ACP Drawing New Attention to Old Debate. Medscape 2026 March 16.
Sulmasy LS, Carney JK. Physicians are not Providers: The Ethical Significance of Names inn health Care: A policy paper from the American College of Physicians. Ann Int Med 2026 Feb 10.
