States expand authority of nurse practitioners and physicians assistants to increase health care in rural areas - Entrepreneur Generations

The shortage of doctors in rural areas hamstrings efforts to fight the opioid epidemic, since medication-assisted therapy is the most effective treatment available. The Drug Enforcement Administration announced in late January that nurse practitioners and physician assistants can obtain a waiver that allows them to prescribe and dispense opioid maintenance drugs. But lawmakers in several states have gone a step further, seeking to expand the scope of practice for nurse practitioners and physician assistants in rural areas where there is often no doctor.

In Georgia, Republican Sate Senator Renee Unterman, who chairs the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, has introduced a bill that would give nurse practitioners in rural areas much more latitude to treat patients. Nine counties in the state have no physician, and dozens of other counties have no pediatricians or obstetric and gynecological doctors. "Proponents argue expanding the scope of practice for nurse practitioners could help fill in the health-care gaps in a growing state with increasing needs, especially with primary care. Nurse practitioners can also specialize in certain areas, such as pediatric care or mental health treatment," Jill Nolan reports for the Valdosta Daily Times.

In April 2017 the Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill that would allow nurse practitioners to practice on their own after fulfilling a three-year, 3,600-hour formal agreement with a physician, Jan Murphy reports for Penn Live. "There are not enough doctors willing to practice in smaller communities and as older doctors retire, fewer new doctors are coming in to replace them," said the bill's sponsor, Republican State Sen. Camera Bartolotta. "Thankfully, there is a solution that holds the promise of easing this looming health care catastrophe."

Texas passed two related bills in 2017: one that allows nurse practitioners in underserved areas to see Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Plan patients without a doctor's supervision, and one that allows APRNs and physicians assistants to sign death certificates. Nurse practitioners had protested having to pay up to six-figure contracts with doctors that would allow the nurse practitioners to treat patients and write prescriptions, Mariana Alfaro reports for The Texas Tribune.







from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2EIDcBo States expand authority of nurse practitioners and physicians assistants to increase health care in rural areas - Entrepreneur Generations

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