American College of Physicians Policy Paper Recommends Retiring 'Provider' Term for Physicians

This content originally appeared on our sister site, Ophthalmology Times.

The American College of Physicians (ACP) recently released a policy paper contending that labeling physicians as “providers” is not merely semantic but has ethical implications that erode professional identity, trust, and the physician–patient relationship.¹

Framing the issue in decades-long concerns about medical commercialization, authors traced the term’s expansion from its 1960s Medicare/Medicaid origin, where it denoted entities eligible for reimbursement, to its current use as a catch-all for clinicians. Authors argued this linguistic shift both reflected and accelerated “deprofessionalization,” a process by which corporatization, employment models, and market-driven structures impair physicians’ ability to practice according to ethical standards. Historical critiques by Arnold Relman, MD, and Edmund Pellegrino, MD, were invoked to underscore that medicine’s commodification predates contemporary language debates.

Ethical objections center on 3 domains:

1. Obscured expertise: “Provider” collapses distinctions in training, scope, and accountability, potentially confusing patients navigating multidisciplinary teams.
2. Mischaracterized care: The term frames medicine as a commercial service rather than a fiduciary relationship grounded in beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice—obligations that can demand prioritizing patient welfare over financial or institutional pressures.
3. Altered identity: Language shapes behavior; transactional nomenclature may weaken altruism, accountability, and public trust foundational to medicine as a learned profession.

The ACP recommended abandoning “provider” when referring to physicians, advocating instead for “physician” for doctors and “clinician” or “health care professional” for collective teams. Preserving ethical practice, they concluded, requires language that foregrounds medicine’s humanistic commitments: relational care, professional judgment, and patient-centered rather than commercially abstracted interactions.

REFERENCES
1. Snyder Sulmasy L, Carney JK; ACP Ethics, Professionalism and Human Rights Committee. Physicians Are Not Providers: The Ethical Significance of Names in Health Care: A Policy Paper From the American College of Physicians. Ann Intern Med. Published online February 10, 2026. doi:10.7326/ANNALS-25-03852