Survey data from 219 nurse practitioners and physician assistants on the channels, cadence, content, and rep access this audience actually responds to, and why their research habits are moving to the open web.
Reaching nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) in 2026 starts with email, runs on a steady twice monthly or weekly cadence, and leads with practical content rather than prestige content. In HealthLink Dimensions' 2025 NP/PA Communications Report, 73% named email as a preferred channel, 60% wanted contact at least twice a month, and product approvals, patient education materials, and continuing medical education (CME) opportunities ranked as the three most valuable content types.
Why NP and PA Reach Deserves Its Own Plan
NPs and PAs are frequently reached as an extension of the physician's audience, on the assumption that behavior is close enough to share a strategy. The 2025 data do not support that assumption. Compared with physicians in the same research program, NPs and PAs are meaningfully more open to text messages (32% versus 18%), more likely to prefer conferences (41% versus 28%), and considerably less oriented toward in-office rep visits (36% versus 52%).
The gap widens on social platforms. NPs and PAs report higher use of Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok than physicians do, while physicians index far higher on professional-only clinician networks. A media plan built for physicians and extended to NPs and PAs will systematically under-invest in the channels this audience actually uses.
Our survey reached 219 NPs and PAs across the United States, fielded July and August 2025, with a margin of error of plus or minus 7%. Five findings from it should shape any reach plan built against this audience.
Five Findings That Should Shape an NP and PA Reach Plan
1. Email Anchors the Plan, but the Channel Mix Has Widened
Seventy-three percent of NPs and PAs named email as a preferred way to receive information from industry, ahead of every other option. What changed in 2025 is what sits behind it. Professional conferences reached 41%, in-office visits 36%, text messages 32%, and virtual meetings with representatives 27%. In 2024, email was the overwhelming favorite and almost nothing else registered.
That shift matters practically. Email is still the anchor, and it is still the only channel where identity ties cleanly to a National Provider Identifier (NPI) for downstream measurement. But a single-channel program now leaves reach on the table with an audience that has become genuinely omnichannel in one year.
2. Consistent Cadence and Early-Afternoon Timing Lift Engagement
NPs and PAs want a rhythm, not a campaign burst. Thirty-one percent prefer contact twice a month and 30% prefer weekly, meaning roughly six in ten want to hear from industry at least twice monthly. Fewer than a quarter chose monthly, and 17% chose quarterly.
Timing compounds cadence. Early afternoon, between noon and 3 p.m., was named the most effective window by 33% of respondents, ahead of early morning at 24% and mid-morning at 23%. And 96% of NPs and PAs report reviewing work email during downtime, which is what makes the early-afternoon window work.
3. Practical Content Outperforms Prestige Content
Asked what information they find most valuable; NPs and PAs chose utility over depth. Product approvals and prescribing updates led at 57%, followed by patient education materials at 56% and CME programs at 55.5%. Disease state information reached 41% and clinical trial summaries of 40%.
The bottom of the list is as instructive as the top. Detailed white papers and journal articles were named by 16%, and infographics by 22%. This is an audience that will read something they can use in a patient encounter tomorrow. Long-form scientific assets are not what earns their limited attention, even though they are frequently what gets produced.
4. Rep Access Is Narrowing in Form, Not Disappearing
Seventy-three percent of NPs and PAs allow some form of rep engagement: 39% allow limited access and 34% allow in-office visits. Only 27% refuse outright. That is a meaningful improvement over 2024, when 61% permitted visits and 39% refused.
The story is not that access is closing. It is that access is becoming conditional. Most of the growth landed in the limited-access middle, which means field programs increasingly need digital reinforcement around a smaller number of in-person touches rather than more attempts at the door. NPs and PAs are also slightly more open than physicians here, at 73% versus 69%.
5. Digital Advertising Has Become a Primary Channel
Sixty-seven percent of NPs and PAs reported noticing professional advertising online in 2025, up from roughly 50% in 2024. Receptivity tracks with that: 34% describe themselves as very receptive to professional digital advertising and 56% somewhat receptive, with only 11% not receptive at all.
NPs and PAs are also more receptive than physicians on this measure. The practical implication is that the limiting factor on programmatic and paid social performance against this audience is rarely resentment of advertising. It is targeting precision and the strength of the clinical evidence in the creative.
What Actually Blocks NP and PA Engagement?
Time and volume, not unwillingness. Half of respondents named lack of time as their top barrier and 48% named information overload. Credibility follows closely: 39% said they prefer peer-reviewed sources over direct marketing, 32% cited unclear or irrelevant messaging, and 31% cited concern about promotional bias.
Those barriers point at execution rather than strategy. Short formats, clear subject lines, a single call to action, and claims backed by citable evidence address most of what this audience says gets in the way. Prescribing data reinforces the point. Clinical efficacy and safety (65%), cost and reimbursement (64%), and patient adherence and quality-of-life impact (62%) all outrank peer or key opinion leader input (34%) by roughly two to one. Peer influence and ambassador programs do real work for awareness, and nothing here says otherwise. They are simply not the strongest input available to a marketer.
Where NPs and PAs Actually Go to Research Products
When asked where they look online for information about healthcare products, medical devices, or disease knowledge, NPs and PAs named general medical reference sites (46%), medical journal websites (44%), specialty association websites (41%), and clinical decision support tools (35%). No professional-only clinician network appeared on that list at all.
That absence is not a small detail. Professional-only clinician networks do show up in social platform usage, but the largest of them fell from 50% of respondents in 2024 to 27% in 2025, and the next reached 7%. Usage is declining, and research is happening somewhere else.
The direction of travel points further away from single destinations. HealthLink Dimensions' 2026 Physician Communications Report found artificial intelligence (AI) referrals to brand sites grew 83.7% year over year while paid search referrals fell 22.9%. NPs and PAs are receptive to that shift, with 40% expecting AI to bring significant benefits to patient care, though they remain appropriately skeptical of AI-generated content that has not been clinically reviewed. An audience strategy anchored to one walled garden gets less durable every quarter under that pressure. One anchored to portable, NPI-linked identity gets more durable, because the audience follows the clinician to whatever surface they adopt next.
Reach Depends on Covering the Full NP and PA Universe
Coverage is the part of this that cannot be improvised. HealthLink Dimensions maintains profiles on more than 600,000 NPs and PAs, with email addresses tested monthly for maximum deliverability. Those audiences are portable: they activate in whatever email, programmatic, or social platform a marketer already uses, with no network membership required and no inventory to buy into.
That portability is what makes the rest of the plan executable. Profile establishes the NPI-linked identity, affiliations, and clinical behavior that define who the audience is. Enrich validates and expands an existing NP and PA file, so campaigns are not deploying against decay. Engage activates that audience across email, programmatic, and paid social, with Trigger Email responding to real-time clinician behavior, so follow-up arrives while interest is still live. Pulse closes the loop, tying opens, clicks, and impressions back to individual NPIs and quantifying prescribing change through Script-Lift Analysis.
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About HealthLink Dimensions
HealthLink Dimensions is the trusted HCP data partner for healthcare marketing agencies and the life sciences, hospital, health plan, and continuing medical education (CME) organizations they serve. Our four connected pillars, Profile, Enrich, Engage, and Pulse, deliver identity-resolved HCP data, clinically relevant audiences, monthly-verified activation, and closed-loop measurement. Every engagement is built on three commitments: Product Excellence, Superior Service, and Privacy & Compliance. Data to Insight. One Trusted Partner.
