You must either be a PA or a NP. Either way, when did you finish school? It must be a long time ago. Anyway they still teach PE in school. They still teach percussion, but not many providers do it.
Today because of time constraints, most of us do focused PE’s. I’ve gone personally for that type of PE myself, where the provider does a ton of hands-on. But he charged good money and it took a good amount of time and it was his practice. In the reality of most exams, whether an ER or Primary Care office, you have very little time to do all you have to and move on. Most of the diagnosis will come from the history anyway. Of course, there are always those that basically skip the PE, just take a quick listen with the scope, and this is also wrong. You need to do a PE, even if it’s just focused and most do. As far as tests go, a practioner should only order tests that might be revelant. But again a lot will order everything under the sun because they are afraid of a lawsuit. I personally won’t, but a lot will. This issue is actually a hot potato in Congress. A lot of politicians are calling for tort reform, so providers will stop ordering anything they can think of. This, like you said, will lower the costs to the insurance provider!