Twenty-six states have laws restricting advance practice clinicians such as NPs and PAs from prescribing medication abortion.In this retrospective study, the estimated effectiveness of medication abortion was 92.9% with advance practice clinicians and 90.1% with physicians, meeting criteria for noninferiority.Emergency department visits and adverse events after medication abortion provisions were rare and did not differ by clinician type.
Medication abortion was just as safe and effective when provided by nurse practitioners (NPs) or physician assistants/associates (PAs) as compared to physicians, a retrospective cohort study suggested.
The estimated effectiveness of mifepristone (Mifeprex) and misoprostol was 92.9% for the advance practice clinicians, which met noninferiority criteria compared with the physicians in the study (90.1%), reported researchers led by Sarah Averbach, MD, MAS, of the University of California San Diego.
Abortion completion rates following prescriptions from NPs and PAs, which made up the bulk of the advance practice clinicians, were 92.8% and 93.2%, respectively. Emergency department visits (0.2%) and adverse events (0.1%) were rare and didn't differ by clinician type, according to the research letter in JAMA Network Open.
