CCNA Director on Funding for Nurse Practioners

The growing shortage of nurses in the U.S. is well documented, and as a recent item in the New York Times reminds us, there is also a crisis in the number of family and general practice physicians—there could be 40,000 too few by 2020, even without health care reform. Meantime, nurse practitioners (NPs), nurses with advanced degrees who can perform a host of primary care services that physicians perform, are willing and able to fill the gap. There are many good reasons to make it easier for existing nurses with the necessary skills and training to deliver more primary care, and to fund education to produce more of them. Among those reasons are that patients who are cared for by NPs are: consistently satisfied with their care, have excellent medical outcomes, and pay less than they would pay a physician for the same services.

Lawmakers at the state and federal levels are looking at ways to free up NPs and remove some of the regulatory obstacles to their providing much needed primary care; significantly, they are also looking for ways to get more of these health care professionals into the workforce. The health care reform bill just passed by the House of Representatives authorizes an additional $638 million to support nurse training from 2011 to 2015, including training for advanced practice nurses. According to Brenda Cleary, CCNA’s director who is quoted in the story, “this bill recognizes that we need more resources for graduate nursing education.”

More information about NPs and other advance practice nurses can be found here.