Health care consumers face a severe shortage of primary care providers who can care for people of all ages, but particularly those with multiple chronic conditions. Florida has about 3 million people living in health professional shortage areas. In some Florida counties no physicians will accept Medicaid and the only Medicaid providers are Advanced Practice Registered Nurses.
Florida is on the American Medical Associations list of states where patients may have trouble accessing a primary care physician. Forty percent of internists do not take new Medicaid patients.
Leading health care economists have studied the evidence and recommend a proven cost-effective and immediate solution to the primary care shortage problem is utilization of Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) who are allowed to practice at their full scope of certification and educational training.
APRNs are Registered Nurses who have advanced their education through graduate studies in primary care, acute hospital care, maternity care, anesthesia care and system wide population care. To practice in Florida they must receive national certification and have a minimum of a Masters degree.
The safety, quality of care and level of patient satisfaction of APRNs have been well documented in multiple research studies and found to be comparable to that of physicians.[1]
Many studies have shown that when states utilize APRNs to their full capacity, the state insurance organizations save money. Utilizing Nurse Practitioners as primary care providers in Tennessee was shown to decrease Medicaid costs by over 20 percent.
In Florida several legislative restrictions prevent APRNs from practicing to their full scope. This causes many Medicaid patients to be denied necessary care.
The national standard is to allow APRNs to practice at their full capacity and realize tremendous cost savings as a result/
In order to increase care and save costs, Florida should change the laws that restrict APRNs from practicing at full scope.
[1] American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. Quality of Nurse Practitioner Practice. Washington D.C. 2007