Language molds perceptions, defines roles, and creates shared understanding. The term “provider” has seeped into health care vernacular, applied indiscriminately to anyone who delivers health services. However, this broad brush diminishes the extensive training, expertise, and responsibility that comes with the role of the physician. It is time we critically examine its effect and curb the misuse of provider before the term “doctor” all but disappears.

The Language of Transactions

Language carries with it the weight of history, power dynamics, context, and societal values. The shift toward calling physicians providers reflects a worrying trend towards depersonalization and deprofessionalization of the practice of medicine.¹ This nomenclature casts physicians less as respected leaders and members of the health care team, and more as a transactional unit of value that can be deployed for revenue generation. According to Mangione et al., there has been a problematic “adoption by medicine of the language and metrics of business, so that academic efforts have been transmogrified into relative value units (RVUs); physicians into providers; and patients into clients, customers, and consumers.”² This trend erodes “medicine’s core mission.”² Renaming physicians as providers is a “sign of the ongoing industrialization of medicine.”³

In a 1993 New York Times Magazine article, physician David Worth, an early critic of the term, presciently warned that: “It is easy to regulate providers but more difficult to regulate doctors, as people have a mental picture of their own doctor’s care. Let us not devalue our physicians by terming them providers. This is just one step away from limiting what they say and depriving them of their ability to make professional decisions.”⁴ This prophecy rings true as physicians increasingly have lost autonomy to make professional decisions and run or influence their practices.

The Power of Language

The clearest origins of the term as applied to physicians in the United States are found in the 1960s with the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid services.^3,5 It has spread rapidly in the last two decades and is now commonplace in academic publications, in the press, by the public, and even by physicians and medical students.

Labels and names influence self-concept and behavior and can become a “self-fulfilling prophecy that defines a person’s internalized role.” Paydarfar et al., note that “the title provider could be acting in this way to subliminally alter our own professional self-concept and behavior.” The shift is from a role that is relational and patient-focused to one that is transactional and task- and metric-focused.³

Together, the loss of autonomy, the shift to a task-based focus, the increasing pressures on physicians, and their devaluation as “providers” all contribute to the high rates of burnout currently experienced by attending physicians and residents, and the growing number of physicians who are leaving clinical practice. Use of the term provider is not the primary driver of burnout and workforce attrition. Rather, widespread and unquestioning adoption of the term is a symptom of greater problems.

Respecting Professional Identity

A microaggression is a subtle, often unintentional, form of discrimination or devaluation. Although the term “provider” might seem harmless, its use in reference to physicians is a microaggression by devaluation. It strips physicians of the title that conveys their level of expertise and responsibility. It is akin to referring to university professors as information providers, judges as a sentence providers, or police officers as safety providers. Although those descriptors are not wholly wrong, they are not reflective of the full scope of their role and, importantly, are not respectful of their desired form of address.

Use of the term often stems from administrative convenience or to create a sense of equivalence among health care team members. Although interdisciplinary collaboration and respect are crucial; they should not come at the cost of erasing individual professional identities. Acknowledging the differences among health care workers is not intended to establish a hierarchy, but to appreciate and respect the unique value each person in his or her role contributes to the team.

Use of the term provider also creates confusion for patients, who have difficulty determining the role, responsibility, and training of different team members.⁶ A blanket term creates confusion rather than clarity. Indeed, “a ‘provider’ is ambiguously associated with corporate entities, like cell phone or utility providers.” As opposed to “physicians whose sacred relationship with patients warrants a higher degree of dignity.”⁷

As we strive for a more inclusive and respectful health care environment, it is essential that we use language that accurately reflects the roles and contributions of each member of the health care team. For physicians, this means reclaiming the title that signifies their expertise, dedication, responsibility, and trust placed in them by patients. Referring to physicians as providers is indicative of a larger problem: the erosion of the physician’s role as a trusted, knowledgeable, and skilled professional.

Reclaiming the Title

There are many actions that organizations, individuals, and media outlets can take to help reclaim the term doctor. The American Medical Association (AMA), ACEP, and many other professional organizations have already issued policies opposing use of the term provider or other non-specific terms (see sidebar).^8,9 The AMA has gone so far as recommending that physicians “insist on being identified as a physician.”⁸ Other professional organizations can issue similar policies.

Journals and media outlets can update their official style guides to require that physicians be named as such, and the term provider, or other similarly nonspecific language be avoided. As Bray and Walker wrote, “The hijacking by corporate officers of the sacred credentials of eight centuries of physicians is unconscionable and should be opposed in every global communication media.”¹⁰

Electronic medical record and scheduling software can rename components of the record such as the “provider note” or phrases such as “next available provider.” Note templates can change phrases such as “attending provider” to “attending physician.”⁷

Educators can use language thoughtfully. Medical students are not attending provider school, but medical school. Early learners are in a phase of rapid knowledge acquisition and assimilation. They are quick to adopt terms they hear from trusted mentors. Residency and medical school educators can model accurate language and avoid referring to their residents or attendings as providers.

Hospital leaders can change the language used in official documents, contracts, and communications.

Finally, all of us can reflect on the terms we use. The language we choose shapes our identity and future reality. If we continue to use the term provider for physicians, we devalue the profession, and disrespect the effort, time, and sacrifice required to become a physician. We perpetuate microaggressions, and we accelerate the transformation of the physician from expert, leader, and healer to a transactional, dispensable, task-based generator of RVUs.

The terms physician and doctor have been a source of solace, comfort, and wisdom across languages and cultures for millennia. We should not let them disappear in our generation.

Dr. Shenvi is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

References

1. Reed RR, Evans D. The deprofessionalization of medicine. Causes, effects, and responses. JAMA. 1987;258(22):3279-3282.
2. Mangione S, Mandell BF, Post SG. The language game: we are physicians, not providers. Am J Med. 2021;134(12):1444-1446.
3. Paydarfar D, Schwartz WJ. Dear provider. JAMA.2011;305(20):2046–2047.
4. Safire W. On language; health care provider, heal thyself. NY Times Magazine. 1993 Apr 11; Section 6, p.12.
5. Scarff JR. “Provider” etymology is unclear, but still wrong for health care. Fed Pract. 2022;39(4):153.
6. AMA Advocacy Resource Center. ‘‘Truth in Advertising’’ campaign. https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2020-10/truth-in-advertising-campaign-booklet.pdf. Accessed August 29, 2024.
7. Sitton B, Korman AM. Dermatologists, not “providers”. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2022;87(6):1459-1460.
8. American Medical Association PolicyFinder. Definition and Use of the Term Physician H-405.951. https://policysearch.ama-assn.org/policyfinder/detail/urge%20physicians%20to%20identify%20themselves%20as%20physicians?uri=%2FAMADoc%2FHOD.xml-H-405.951.xml. Accessed April 6, 2025.
9. American College of Emergency Physicians Policy Statements. Opposing the Use of the Term “Provider” approved October 2023., https://www.acep.org/patient-care/policy-statements/opposing-the-use-of-the-term-provider#:~:text=ACEP%20strongly%20supports%20health%20care,any%20other%20non%2Dspecific%20terminology. Accessed April 6, 2025.
10. Bray TJ, Walker J. Medical school or “provider school”. J Orthop Trauma. 2021;35(2):e64-e65.