As someone who spends his life working with words and sentences — both his own and those of others — I pay close attention to the way things are labeled and described.
Sometimes, these choices are brilliant. Other times, they are less than ideal.
One of my least favorite labels is the word “provider” used to describe doctors, nurses, physician assistants, psychologists, psychiatrists, physical therapists, and even dentists and optometrists.
Probably many more.
Provider is a stupid word to describe these people, for a few reasons.
First and foremost, it lacks the specificity these people deserve.
Many people are providers. In fact, most people are providers in one way or another.
My landscaper is a provider of lawn care.
My son’s guitar teacher is a provider of musical instruction.
My golf coach is a provider of better golf swings.
The woman at the McDonald’s in Newington, CT is the provider of my Egg McMuffin every day.
My children are providers of dirty laundry, the half-dozen Cheerios I routinely find on the kitchen floor, and goodnight kisses to my cheek or forehead.
Provider is a generic word that can be applied to nearly everyone.
These are people who routinely save lives and extend life. Reduce and remove pain. Cure illness.
Provider doesn’t come close to what they do.
Nor is it specific enough for patients. When a nurse tells me that “the provider” will see you in a few minutes, does this mean a physician will be walking through the door? Or a physician’s assistant? A nurse practitioner? Someone else entirely?
That’s not great, either.
Provider is both demeaning to the people doing the work and lacks specificity for the people receiving treatment.
I hate it.
Medical professionals should, too, because words matter, and provider degrades their role and its importance.
I got curious about why this word is used to describe these highly trained professionals, and it turns out that the term became common largely because of the health insurance industry.
More specifically, the people doing the billing.
Insurers needed a category broad enough to describe everyone who could deliver and bill for healthcare services, so terms such as “healthcare provider” and “participating provider” became standard.
Hospitals and health systems then increasingly adopted the terminology.
So medical professionals became known as providers and began referring to themselves as providers because people in insurance companies’ billing departments needed a simple way to describe anyone treating, healing, or saving patients’ lives.
This strikes me as incredibly stupid. Never allow people who have little or nothing to do with your work to define you in any way. The men and women of the billing department at an insurance company should not have sway over how a cardiologist is referred to while conducting open-heart surgery.
I also learned that many medical professionals dislike the word, too, because it erases distinctions in education, training, and responsibility between physicians and other clinicians and makes medical care sound transactional.
The American Medical Association has specifically encouraged the use of precise titles such as “physician” rather than the generic “provider.”
I agree. Wholeheartedly.
Pro-tip:
Never allow anyone outside of your profession to label your profession. They will almost certainly do a bad job.
