Dr. Steve Maron, a board-certified Arizona pediatrician formerly employed by United Community Health Center’s Green Valley clinic, believes that he was fired after writing an op-ed in his local newspaper, in which he questioned whether the quality of care delivered by mid-level practitioners is equal to the quality of care provided by physicians.

In his editorial, “IN MY VIEW: Are NPs Same as MDs?,” Maron noted his respect for the profession of nursing and for nurse practitioners (NP), but expressed his professional concern that some patients are not told that they are seeing a nurse practitioner — and that many patients do not understand that there might be a difference in a mid-level’s training, relative to a physician’s training.

This, he said, is becoming an increasing area of concern as the types of patient care delivery systems continue to evolve away from traditional MDs.

“In the course of my job I frequently encounter nurse practitioners. I have found them on the whole to be well-trained, dedicated, popular with the patients and intelligent,” Maron wrote.

“I am, however, quite concerned about the implication that NPs completely replace physicians. It was never the intent when NP programs were begun to replace physicians, but to function as supervised physician ‘extenders’,” he noted. “There is a clear trend in place to not only regard NPs as fully qualified and able to replace physician generalists, but also specialists.”

In the wake of that article’s publication, Maron was terminated by his employer. No official cause for his dismissal has been publicly given, and the clinic’s chief operating officer declined to comment further for the Arizona Daily Times’ story on the matter.

“It is unfortunate that an article will be written with only one side of the story, but we are not at liberty to discuss any employment related issues for Dr. Maron,” Wendy Kibby told the newspaper.

Read Stephanie Innes’s report here, in the Arizona Daily Times.