Factors Associated with Physician Assistant Practice in Rural and Primary Care in Utah

Table 4

Predictors of primary care¹/specialty care practice.

Independent variable	𝑁=381 *	OR (95% CI)	𝑃 value
Agea
21–30	53	1.00	—
31–40	137	1.74 (0.85–3.57)	0.129
41–50	87	1.58 (0.67–3.74)	0.289
51–60	83	1.49 (0.55–4.02)	0.429
61+	21	0.52 (0.12–2.15)	0.367
Genderb
Male	227	1.00	—
Female	154	0.56 (0.33–0.96)	0.035
Years of practice2,c
0–5	183	1.00	—
6–10	77	0.67 (0.35–1.28)	0.228
11–15	60	0.33 (0.14–0.76)	0.010
16–20	32	0.26 (0.09–0.76)	0.014
21+	29	0.49 (0.15–1.51)	0.214
Physician assistant school of graduationd
Non-Utah PA school	198	1.00	—
Utah	183	2.16 (1.34–3.49)	0.002
Location of upbringing3,e
Urban	66	1.00	—
Suburban	198	0.49 (0.26–0.93)	0.029
Rural	117	0.33 (0.16–0.66)	0.002

*After deleting missing cases for all predictor variables listed above (for logistic regression), 381 of the 432 total records were left for analysis.
¹Primary care definition: Family practice, General internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology.
² Years of practice: number of years since first license issue.
³Self-reported location of upbringing rural/suburban/urban.
Baseline category for comparison is: aage <31 yrs; bmale; c0–5 yrs of practice; dnon-Utah PA school graduate; eurban upbringing.