Profitable Medicare initiative will increase the availability of nurse practitioners to deal with main care shortages

A brand new examine printed at this time in Well being Affairs reveals that Medicare assist for medical coaching for nurse practitioners would enhance their numbers and handle the nationwide scarcity of main care. The examine, by researchers on the Heart for Well being Outcomes and Coverage Analysis, College of Pennsylvania College of Nursing, the Hospital of the College of Pennsylvania, and the Leonard Davis Institute of Well being Economics reveals that universities collaborating within the $200 million Graduate Nurse Training (GNE) Demonstration considerably elevated the variety of main care NPs they graduated. Co-author Linda Aiken, Ph.D., RN, stated “One in 4 People, or over 80 million folks, lack a main care supplier. Nurse practitioners with superior medical coaching in main care assist the general public receive well being care once they want it. There are many certified candidates to college NP applications however admissions are restricted as a result of we do not have sufficient main care clinicians to oversee pupil learners of their practices.”

The Graduate Nurse Training Demonstration, launched underneath the Reasonably priced Care Act, offered chosen hospitals with Medicare funding to assist offset prices related to medical coaching of NPs. The funded hospitals have been the Hospital of the College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA; Duke College Hospital in Durham, NC; Rush College Hospital in Chicago, IL; Scottsdale Healthcare Medical Heart in Scottsdale, AZ: and Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Heart in Houston. These hospitals created partnerships with college NP academic applications. The biggest of the funded websites was the Hospital of the College of Pennsylvania, which served as a regional hub for a community comprising 9 universities with NP graduate applications, a number of hospitals and well being methods, and plenty of community-based main care practices.

Co-author Regina Cunningham, Ph.D., RN, Chief Government Officer of the Hospital of the College of Pennsylvania, stated, “The GNE Demonstration reveals that longstanding challenges in well being care just like the scarcity of main care suppliers may be efficiently addressed when well being care organizations in communities band collectively for the frequent good. Working collectively in Philadelphia throughout well being methods, public clinics, personal medical practices, and faculties of nursing, we have been in a position to recruit a bigger variety of practising physicians and nurse practitioners to mentor NP college students to assist them meet their medical coaching necessities of 500 or extra hours thus enabling nursing faculties to simply accept extra pupil NPs.”

First creator Joshua Porat-Dahlerbruch notes, “The price of medical coaching for one nurse practitioner within the GNE Demonstration was about $47,000 in comparison with the price of medical coaching for a main care doctor of over $157,000.” The GNE funds have been used to assist preceptors largely practising in community-based settings.

The GNE Demonstration additionally confirmed the success and feasibility of utilizing regional consortia to distribute Medicare coaching funds to a restricted variety of hospitals for coaching nurse practitioner college students. This can be a promising solution to modernize Medicare graduate medical schooling to supply extra of main care suppliers that this nation wants.