We all want to have access to health care when we are not feeling well and we want to do so without breaking our budget.  However there is growing concern about the availability of care and the increasing costs. One of the most promising responses to these concerns is the employment of more nurse practitioners by family medicine clinics and expanding their clinical roles as members of the patient care teams. There are many advantages to this approach. First it greatly improves access to care and second it can reduce costs since nurse practitioners are paid about half as much as physicians and insurance plans pay less for their patient visits. In some Family Medicine Practices nurse practitioners provide care for about one third of the patients who would otherwise be seen by a physician. Moreover some studies have found that patient satisfaction is higher in clinics that have nurse practitioners, probably because they tend to spend more time with patients and are more attentive to patients concerns.

However, while the potential of nurse practitioners to improve health care and lower cost is clearly evident our recent study found that this potential isn’t always realized.  In fact we found that in some Family Medicine Clinics with nurse practitioners patent costs are higher than in clinics without these practitioners. This raises serious questions about the ability of medical clinics to effectively utilize the full potential of nurse practitioners to improve access to affordable health care. Our study suggests that in some clinics nurse practitioners are not being included as full members of the clinical teams and that this limits their contributions to patient care while actually increasing costs. Why is this occurring? While studies have found that some physicians are reluctant to share their clinical roles with nurse practitioners there are many other factors that influence the optimal use of these practitioners including state regulations that limit their scope of work, inability to get paid for their services by some health insurance plans, and malpractice insurance concerns. How all this relates to the influence of nurse practitioner staffing ratios on the costs and quality of care is the focus of our next research projects. The employment of more nurse practitioners has great promise for improving health care but it won’t be realized unless these staffing issues are resolved.

Publication

The role of nurse practitioners in primary healthcare.
Kralewski J, Dowd B, Curoe A, Savage M, Tong J.
Am J Manag Care. 2015 Jun 1

Read offline:     

Related Articles:

	Good governance for migratory fish stocks As the oceans warm in response to continued greenhouse gas emissions, fish are moving to seek out their preferred environmental conditions. These shifts in distribution are changing the locations of…
	Your pharmacist will see you now! Public perception of pharmacists might be limited to dispensing medications. However, pharmacists are trained to deliver patient care to help patients improve their health-related outcomes and achieve their goals. Recognizing…
	An open journey approach to spiritual care education “Life is a Journey” is a common metaphor used around the world. While this is a true picture of life, the journey theme can be useful to express a variety…
	Analysis of the arabidopsis Major Facilitator Superfamily… As sessile organisms, plants need to adapt rapidly to the environmental fluctuations they endure during their life cycle in order to survive. Upon external insults, plants activate a network of…
	If you are cold, what two cold-sensitive ion channels TRPM8… Human and animals are capable of perceiving temperature stimuli due to the presence in the body of specialized sensory neurons in the peripheral and central nervous system. The sense of…
	The minimally invasive and percutaneous ways: A tale of two… Over the decades, advances in medicine have led to large increases in life-expectancy, a fact most are grateful for. However, accompanying this boost in longevity we also find a rise…