At a Texas Capitol-held press conference on May 14 the Texas Team Advancing Health through Nursing convened to advance the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, and released a report by noted Texas economist Dr. Ray Perryman that outlines how the efficient use of advance practice registered nurses (APRN) – streamline regulations on when those nurses can write prescriptions – would immediately benefit Texas, create permanent jobs, and make health care more available statewide.
The report projects that reducing unnecessary restrictions on APRN practice to permit fuller utilization will result in Texas seeing an annual increase of $8 billion in gross product and an annual creation of 97,000 permanent jobs. The economic stimulus would spark additional yearly tax receipts of $483.9 million to the State of Texas and $233.2 million to local governments.
“The report shows that more fully utilizing an existing resource – APRNs – to help meet the state’s health care shortage not only is good common sense, it is good economic sense,” said Cmdr. James Dickens, a member of the Texas Team and senior program officer for the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health in the Dallas Regional Office. “We believe advanced practice registered nurses are – and should be – partners with physicians and other health care professionals in the redesign of the health care system in Texas.”
Currently, Texas law grants APRNs prescriptive authority under a site-based model first enacted in 1989 that included sites serving medically underserved population and each site has its own restrictions.
Texas nurses are proposing a model used by 17 other states that require physician involvement. Under the model, an APRN, in order to prescribe, must (1) be credentialed by the Texas Board of Nursing as qualified to prescribe (the same as current law); and (2) have a collaborative prescriptive authority agreement with a physician or physician group that provides for consultation with and referral to the physician or physician group.
During the press conference it was noted this proposal has not been before the legislature before. It was also noted the press conference was utilized to frame the dialogue the Texas Team hopes to begin with the Texas Medical Association.