Very happy to see this one out https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.70166, because of the research but even more because of the story behind the paper. It all started on a bus ride from Galway to Rossaveel Harbour, on our way to Inis Meáin island. The research question came out of a chat between Ben and me on the bus which continued during a day spent riding around the island on a rental bicycle (including some flat tire action rushing back to catch the ferry). I wish that all papers had such a nice story behind them (and I should try more to make that happen).

No pic from that trip unfortunately, but here’s one from a hike in Connemara the day before or the day after.

Here’s the abstract:

Primary healthcare systems worldwide face a shortage of General Practitioners and Nurses. One response by the English Health System to combat this shortage is to expand the role of non-traditional roles in primary care, often shifting away tasks from Nurses. Non-traditional practitioners, though less taxing on budgets, tend to have less formal training than Doctors and Nurses, which may affect quality of care. Using data from 614,115 respondents to a survey of primary care patients in England between 2018 and 2022, we assess the extent to which non-traditional practitioners meet patients’ needs in primary care appointments. Patients who see a non-traditional provider have a 12.6 percentage points lower probability that their care needs were met, relative to those seeing a Nurse. Findings are consistent across linear, probit and instrumented recursive bivariate probit models, and concentrated amongst patients aged 35–54.