The physician shortage : a manufactured crisis? -- A tale of two professions : from nurse practitioner to physician -- Diploma mills and Facebook consults -- The death of primary care -- Profits over patients -- Is there a doctor in the house? -- The fall of the ivory tower -- A star is gone : mental illness and the rise of the psychiatric nurse practitioner -- Phoning it in : virtual mental health care -- Non-physicians and the cash-based practice -- And justice for all? -- Diverting the Titanic

"When you experience a medical emergency, you expect to be treated by a licensed physician with expertise in your condition. But what happens when you look up from your hospital gurney to find that the doctor has been replaced by a non-physician practitioner with just a fraction of the training and experience? From the co-author of Patients at Risk: The Rise of the Nurse Practitioner and Physician Assistant in Healthcare, the first book to warn about the systematic replacement of physicians, comes Patients at Risk: Imposter Doctors, an even more frightening expos of patient endangerment at the hands of for-profit corporate entities and healthcare conglomerates. In the two years since Patients at Risk debuted, the use of nonphysician practitioners has skyrocketed. Employment of nurse practitioners is projected to grow by 40% and physician assistants by 28% in the next ten years. At the same time, the employment of physicians and surgeons is projected to grow just 3%. In other words, if you haven t already been treated by a nonphysician practitioner instead of a physician, you soon will be. The disproportionate growth in healthcare providers reflects thirty years of U.S. healthcare policy, as influenced by nonphysician lobbyists and corporate strategists. While corporations and government agencies argue that they have been forced to hire nurse practitioners and physician assistants due to a supposed physician shortage, the truth is far more sinister. Physicians are being systematically fired and replaced by lesser trained clinicians for one simple reason: to make money. Advocates for nonphysician practice claim that there is no need for concern because nurse practitioners and physician assistants are just as good as physicians. They are wrong. Despite over fifty years of scientific analysis of the care provided by nonphysicians, there is no conclusive evidence that nonphysician practitioners can provide safe and effective medical care without physician oversight. In fact, new studies have shown the opposite: that the replacement of physicians puts patients at risk. The book Imposter Doctors exposes the dangers of a healthcare system that increasingly prioritizes profits over patient care. The only cure for today s healthcare crisis is for patients to become informed about who is providing their care. They must know the difference in training and education, and they must demand answers from those who would deprive them of physician-led care"--