CASPA Applicant Pool Continues to Grow

By Steven Lane

The number of applicants to the Central Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA) increased for the fifth straight year, reported CASPA Advisory Committee Chair Ted Ruback at his biannual presentation of CASPA data at the PAEA Semiannual Meeting in San Francisco last month.

More than 8,000 applicants (8,032) used the service this year, up 13.3 percent over the 7,088 applicants in 2005. The total number of applications — total applicants multiplied by average number of designations — increased as well, to 36,459, up 21.1 percent from 30,109 in 2005. “Our applicant pool is looking pretty good,” Ruback said.

Demographically, the CASPA applicant pool mirrors the numbers reported by all programs in the Annual Report. Applicants are predominantly female (this percentage has held steady at around 70 percent over the five years of the service) and white — 73 percent of the applicant pool identified themselves as white in 2006.

The average amount of previous health care experience self-reported by applicants increased significantly this year, to 4.17 years from 3.57 years in 2005, though the amount of this experience that is direct patient care experience dropped to 1.88 years from 2.32 last year.

CASPA continues to make improvements in its service to both applicants and programs, Ruback said. The average processing time for applications during the peak month (November) in the 2005-2006 cycle was 12.1 days, down significantly from the previous year’s peak of 32 days in December 2004. This is well below the industry standard of 4 to 6 weeks, Ruback said. Technological advances and enhanced communications processes are likely responsible for this improvement, he explained.

The service continues to move toward electronic transfer of all data, and this year will begin scanning all reference letters. The ultimate goal is a completely paperless system, Ruback said. Customer satisfaction data show that the service is doing an excellent job, Ruback added, with 91 percent of applicants and 94 percent of programs indicating that CASPA was “responsive” or “very responsive” to their concerns.

More complete data will be available this fall. A research consultant has been hired to analyze all the data from the service’s first five years. The first analysis is due to the committee this summer.

CASPA will also begin comparing the characteristics of all applicants to those who actually matriculate into a program, which will provide a much clearer picture of what makes for a successful applicant. This information will be very useful to applicants and health advisors and for programs’ recruiting efforts, said Ruback. “We are now learning more about our applicant pool than we ever knew, which will be useful to everyone involved with the profession,” he said.