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Nurse practitioners and physician associates are two of the fastest growing clinician groups.
Richard Zwickel
Founder and CEO
POCN
Life sciences marketing has long revolved around physicians. Traditionally seen as the gatekeepers of prescribing power, their central role is shifting. An increasing share of prescriptions in the U.S. are now being written by nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician associates (PAs), and that evolution demands new thinking.
Life sciences marketers who haven’t realigned their strategies to include NPs and PAs are overlooking one of the fastest-growing and most impactful clinician groups in the country.
Together, the nation’s approximately 740,000 NPs and PAs are responsible for more than 1.4 billion prescriptions each year. In key therapeutic areas, they account for over 30% of total patient prescriptions, and in some specialties, that number climbs to as much as 50%. They also drive a significant portion of new-to-brand prescriptions (NBRx).
According to MM+M, 20.9% of life sciences marketers in 2023 identified NPs and PAs as a priority audience. That’s a sharp increase over the previous year and one of the largest year-over-year shifts across all prescriber segments.
Despite this growing importance, NPs and PAs are often difficult to reach using conventional prescriber targeting. They may not have board-certified specialties listed in prescribing databases, which can obscure their clinical focus. Behavioral segmentation is helping marketers better understand and target these clinicians based on real-world prescribing patterns.
NPs and PAs share overlapping scopes of practice, but their paths to clinical practice differ. Understanding these differences is key to crafting meaningful outreach.
NPs are educated in the nursing model, which emphasizes holistic, patient-centered care and considers social determinants of health. PAs, by contrast, are trained in the medical model—more akin to physicians—with a focus on diagnostics, disease progression, and pharmacological intervention.
Effective messaging should reflect a nuanced understanding of how NPs and PAs approach care. This doesn’t mean segmenting them as a separate audience, but rather by expanding upon traditional MD-targeted messaging to address the specific roles, challenges, and decision-making contexts of NPs and PAs in each therapeutic area. While their educational models differ, both groups prioritize patient-centered outcomes, and marketers will be most effective when they align content to those clinical realities.
NPs and PAs are digital-first and time-constrained. They engage best with content that is flexible, concise, and seamlessly fits into their workflow. This includes point-of-care education, short-form peer insights, clinical decision support resources, and dynamic formats like interactive learning modules and brief case-based discussions that are delivered across the digital platforms they already use in practice.
Marketing strategies that reflect this focus and deliver information in formats they prefer will outperform traditional approaches.
To engage these influential prescribers, life sciences marketers should consider evolving their tactics with support from organizations or partners who understand this audience deeply.
Accessing behavioral insights, especially when credentials don’t reveal a provider’s clinical specialty, can enable:
Prescribing power is no longer concentrated in the hands of physicians alone. As it becomes more distributed across the care team, marketers who recognize and adapt to this shift will be better positioned to build meaningful engagement and drive results.
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