• Cameron J Gettel, Maureen E Canavan, Gail D'Onofrio, Brendan G Carr, and Arjun K Venkatesh.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA; National Clinician Scholars Program, Department of Internal Medicine, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA. Electronic address: cameron.gettel@yale.edu.
• Am J Emerg Med. 2021 Apr 1; 42: 228-232.

ObjectiveClinician expertise has been associated with improved patient outcomes, yet ED clinicians often work in various clinical settings beyond the ED and, therefore, may risk expertise by having less clinical focus. We sought to describe clinical focus among the emergency care workforce nationally.MethodsUsing the 2017 Medicare Public Use Files (PUF), we performed a cross-sectional analysis of clinicians receiving reimbursement for emergency care Evaluation & Management (E/M) services from Medicare fee-for-service Part B. Clinicians were categorized by type as EM physicians, non-EM physicians, and advanced practice providers (APPs). The primary outcome was the clinical focus of the individual clinician, defined as the proportion of E/M services within the ED setting relative to a clinician's total E/M services across all practice settings.ResultsOf 65,710 unique clinicians providing care to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries in the ED setting, 39,016 (59.4%) were classified as EM physicians, 8123 (12.4%) as non-EM physicians, and 18,571 (28.5%) as APPs. The individual clinician median focus was 92.8% (interquartile range [IQR]: 87.0, 100.0) for EM physicians, 45.2% (IQR: 5.1, 97.0) for non-EM physicians, and 100.0% (IQR: 96.3, 100.0) for APPs.ConclusionEM physicians have twice as much clinical focus in comparison to non-EM physicians providing emergency care to Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries. These findings underscore the importance of diverse training and certification programs to ensure access to clinically focused ED clinicians.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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