Why physician is not the same as provider (KevinMD)

Calling a doctor a provider sounds harmless. The American College of Physicians says it isn’t. Janet Jokela, former treasurer of the American College of Physicians, professor, and medical educator, discusses the KevinMD article “Physician vs. provider is an ethics issue, not just style.” She walks through how the word “provider” entered medicine through Medicare in 1965 and ended up lumping physicians together with hospitals and insurance companies as interchangeable “providers of services.” You will hear why the Latin root of compassion (to suffer with) names something physicians do that corporate entities do not, why the ethical obligations physicians take on (do no harm, beneficence, patient autonomy, justice) do not apply to insurance companies or hospital systems in the same way, and why allowing the language to blur that line accelerates the deprofessionalization of medicine. You will hear what to say when someone calls you a provider, and what to call mixed clinical teams instead.