A Nurse Practitioner's View

The infographic below comes courtesy of Simmons School of Nursing & Health Sciences. Check the full link out at:  http://onlinenursing.simmons.edu/affordable-care-act-family-nurse-practitioners/

Encourage your Members of Congress to co-sponsor the Home Health Care Planning Improvement Act of 2013 Enactment of the Home Health Care Planning Improvement Act of 2013 will make it possible for NPs to provide necessary services for their Medicare patients by allowing them to certify that patients under their care are eligible for home health care services. Passage of this legislation will reduce Medicare spending by eliminating duplicative services while also improving the quality and timeliness of care for the beneficiaries who require home health services. Here is the link to the Bill, H.R. 2504  -  To amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to ensure more timely access to home health services for Medicare beneficiaries under the Medicare program. Take Action Now

This post was written in response to the WSJs article, " Should Nurse Practitioners Be Able to Treat Patients Without Physician Oversight? " As much as some would like you to believe that this is not about turf protection, make no mistake, it is exactly about protectionism and nothing in the interest of the patient. The latest buzz words are now “team-based care” where nurse practitioners, physicians, and other members of the health care team, are working for the common goal of better health outcomes while the inefficiencies of today’s healthcare system vanish. The problem with this presumption is that there is no defined model of team-based care. So what then is team-based care? If you ask a physician what team-based care is, they would say it is where they are in charge of the team and tell what the other members to do. They hold the most hours of in-patient training and in doing so can care for every patient and every condition without anyone else telling them how...

As the case for nurse practitioners is becoming increasingly obvious across the spectrum, predictably, the turf battles are rearing their ugly heads. Here is a blatant  example  of the rhetoric and follows a formula that I am going to reveal to spare any future time wasting reading them. Refer to the physician shortage and mention "Obamacare"  State the obligatory, "nurse practitioners are valued as part of the health care team"  Point out the differences in education and training (for example, physicians have 1 billion hours of training where NPs have nothing even remotely close to that)  Make the inference that quality of care will somehow suffer because of the differences in education/training (though there is not one shred of evidence that proves this) Make sure NOT to mention anything about patient outcomes being the same or better when NPs are primary care providers If there is mention of outcome studies, be sure to highlight how they are "ol...

My apologies in advance for this post as I'm sure it is a bit all of the place. I wanted to just jot down some of my thoughts on the "nurse practitioner vs. physician debate." There has been many articles recently written about this, so here are my thoughts: (these of course are my own thoughts and not representative of my affiliations) Above all else, nurse practitioners want to practice at the "top of our licenses." That is, to our full education and training. Imagine having access to the most wonderful car in the world - that can not only take you to wherever you want to go, in great comfort and with with excellent gas mileage, but not having the keys to start it. That is the restriction of the collaborative agreement. NPs have the education and training to care for patients in their specialty. However, without a collaborative agreement with a physician, we can't use any of it. We are stuck in the proverbial parking lot without keys.  Nurse practiti...

Hello Everyone and thanks for reading my blog. It has been a while since my last post - not for a lack of topics to post about - but due to an insane schedule that I have been keeping. Here in New York, we have been through he effects of SuperStorm/Hurricane Sandy, another presidential election, and the tragedy of the unfathomable nearby Newtown Connecticut shootings. There is so much also going on in healthcare and the aforementioned happenings are also intertwined in the landscape - from emergency preparedness, state health insurance exchanges as part of the Affordable Care Act, and mental health respectively. Specific to nurse practitioners, there have been numerous articles written about us (and the interesting negative commentary that always follows and isn't worth commenting on anymore). We have also seen the merger of two national nurse practitioner organizations into one large one. CMS announced that there will be increased Medicaid reimbursement for certain physici...