In a new Journal of General Internal Medicine article, Mark Unruh, Ph.D., assistant professor of population health sciences; Yuting Qian, M.S., research coordinator of population health sciences; Lawrence Casalino, M.D., Ph.D., MPH, professor of population health sciences; Arian Jung, Ph.D., assistant professor of population health sciences, and colleagues studied the prevalence and characteristics of assisted living facility (ALF) clinicians from 2014 to 2017. While over 800,000 people reside in over 28,000 ALFs nationwide, not much was previously known about the clinicians providing their care. The researchers found that during this time frame, the number of ALF specialists increased by 56.1%, occasional ALF clinicians increased by 25.31%, physicians increased by 8.68%, and advanced practitioners increased by 52.8%. Future research should focus on determining if the number of ALF specialists continues to grow and whether they can provide higher quality care than occasional ALF clinicians.
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