The Health-Care Lexicon Is De-Professionalizing the Practice of Medicine

In recent years, the term "service provider" has been deployed widely as a descriptor for doctors and other medical professionals. That's unfortunate, as the terminology de-professionalizes those who work and study for years to become expert at delivering medical treatments, interventions, diagnoses, and counseling. And it concomitantly threatens to transform patients into mere customers; doctors, essentially into so many order takers.

Some physicians' organizations have noticed the trend and are pushing back. A few months ago, an opinion article in the Annals of Internal Medicine argued that using the term "service provider" has negative ethical implications. From "Physicians are not Providers" (citations omitted):

First, the current use of provider in reference to institutions, insurers, physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and other clinicians lumps impersonal entities in with humans and obscures differences in clinical training and expertise.…

Second, the duties of physicians differ from those of individuals and entities who deliver commercial and other services.…This partnership is not transactional but rather relational.…

Third, use of the term provider undermines ethics and professionalism. Medicine is dedicated to serving others whose trust must be earned. As quoted in the ACP Ethics Manual, Francis Peabody said that medicine is not "a trade to be learned, but a profession to be entered," with publicly declared values (in Latin, the "profess" in "profession") and ethical duties to uphold.…

Fourth, language not only affects the perception and value attributed to what is being provided but can also alter one's professional sense of self and influence behavior. Communication and language are key. To quote Robert M. McLean, MD, former president of ACP, "Patients share things with us that they share with nobody else, including close family." Language should focus on "health and not healthcare, on relationships and not transactions, and on people and not products."

That makes abundant sense to me.