Practice & Access to Care

Submitted by Barry Kornacki, Veterans Administration Medical Center, Martinsburg, WV

The patient in this picture is enrolled in the Care Coordination/Home Telehealth program managed by the Veterans Administration's Martinsburg, WV, Medical Center.

Embracing the importance of the recommendations of the Institute of Medicine report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health, the North Carolina Medical Journal (NCMJ) sponsored a summit of North Carolina nurse leaders to review and discuss the recommendations.

Excela Health Care Transitions program, located in Westmoreland County in southwestern Pennsylvania is a recent recipient of a 2011 Excellence Award from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for demonstrating reduction in hospital readmissions among older adults.

Maggie Gossett, RN, Visiting Nurse Association of Central Jersey, pictured on the right, is delegating tube feeding and medication administration to a certified home health aide as part of New Jersey (NJ) Nurse Delegation Pilot Project, dubbed “There’s No Place Like Home,” because its purpose was to improve methods for providing skilled nursing care to patients in their homes so they would not have to be confined to institutio

In this New York Times Health News blog, Paula Span writes about the looming shortage of health care professionals in all specialties, but especially geriatrics. According to Span, nowhere is the shortage more problematic than in this area, with the rapidly aging U.S. population. Christopher Langston, program director at the John A.

Nurse Practitioners (NPs) in Virginia say fewer restrictions on their practice would free them to be better caregivers for the state’s population, especially residents in underserved areas. Virginia is one of 24 states that require physician supervision of nurses. But because of report recommendations released in October 2010 by the Institute of Medicine that strongly encourage the removal of barriers such as physician supervision, Virginia NPs feel the urgency to move forward in challenging this requirement.