Demographics and clinical characteristics of patients of prescribing psychologists, psychiatrists, and primary care physicians.

Assessing the safety and efficacy of prescribing psychologists in New Mexico and Louisiana.

“…In a hypothetical RCT, patients in need of psychotropic medication would have been assigned to one of three prescriber types—prescribing psychologists (treatment), psychiatrists (active control), or PCPs (active control)—and outcomes would be assessed during the following year. To emulate this hypothetical RCT in an observational cohort study, we used insurance claims for a previously identified cohort of patients in NM and LA from 2005 to 2021 who received a psychotropic medication from a psychologist, psychiatrist, or PCP ( n = 307,478; Hughes et al, 2024).…”

“…Third, our use of an algorithmic approach to identify providers almost certainly introduces a measure of misclassification. This approach has been examined in detail previously (Hughes et al, 2024), lending some credibility to this method of classification. Additionally, the consistent results between the main analyses and the sensitivity analyses This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.…”

“…Most recently, a pooled cross-sectional analysis of private insurance claims data described the characteristics of the patients being treated by a prescribing psychologist as compared to psychiatrists and primary care physicians (PCPs) and the medications initially prescribed by those providers (Hughes et al, 2024). That study demonstrated that prescribing psychologists are treating a patient population more similar to psychiatrists than PCPs but are less likely to prescribe antipsychotic medications than psychiatrists (Hughes et al, 2024).…”

“…Most recently, a pooled cross-sectional analysis of private insurance claims data described the characteristics of the patients being treated by a prescribing psychologist as compared to psychiatrists and primary care physicians (PCPs) and the medications initially prescribed by those providers (Hughes et al, 2024). That study demonstrated that prescribing psychologists are treating a patient population more similar to psychiatrists than PCPs but are less likely to prescribe antipsychotic medications than psychiatrists (Hughes et al, 2024). Combined, the limited literature suggests that RxP has been beneficial, and prescribing psychologists are not generating complaints from other providers or patients; however, given the relative novelty of prescribing psychologists and their growing role within the mental health workforce, there remains a significant amount of research needed to assess the quality of prescribing psychology practice.…”

“…As a result, the issue of patient safety remains a top concern for opponents of RxP policies (Curtis et al, 2023; Robiner et al, 2020). In this study, we expand on a prior cross-sectional study using private insurance claims from NM and LA (Hughes et al, 2024) to conduct a longitudinal cohort study designed specifically to assess the outcomes associated with patients of prescribing psychologists as compared to the traditional prescribers that comprise the majority of psychotropic prescribing: psychiatrists and PCPs. Specifically, where the prior study was an epidemiologic analysis examining patient characteristics prior to medication initiation and the providers’ initial psychotropic prescribing choices, the present study examines the incidence of ADEs, psychiatric emergency department (ED) utilization, medication adherence, and psychotropic polypharmacy in the year following the initiation of psychotropic prescribing to capture a range of safety and efficacy measures.…”