A business school professor’s solution to health care costs. With this thinking, why is there the need for medical school? Simply take a 2-year program and you’ll have all the privileges doctors have.
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{ 6 comments }
Man, you are ignorant. There is a difference between a nurse practitioner and an R. N. Both are skilled professionals and your contempt for their skills should be something that you should keep quiet since they are part of the healthcare team. An N.P. needs to be an R.N. first and then go back to school and it takes considerably more than two years (except maybe if you have a 4-year degree already and the appropriate prerequisites) to be licensed if you’re starting from scratch.
Elliott,
The article states that we are not yet in a world where nurses (RNs) are able to prescribe, implying this would be the author’s goal:
“We haven’t moved the health care profession into a world where nurses can provide diagnosis and care. Regulation is keeping the treatment in expensive hospitals when in fact much lower cost-delivery models are available…
In Massachusetts, nurses cannot write prescriptions. . .”
An RN degree takes 2-4 years to obtain:
http://www.allnursingschools.com/faqs/be_rn.php
So, I’m not sure what the problem is.
Kevin
“David E. Williams is co-founder of MedPharma Partners LLC, strategy consultant to pharma, biotech, device, and technology enabled healthcare services industries.”
I am sure his pharma clients would love to see the overprescribing of abx by RNs in minute clinics.
I personally don’t have anything against NPs writing precriptions under the guidance of a physician. My NP does just fine with the run of the mill type of things. Since I am there in the clinic with her most of the time, if I am not in the OR, she can bounce things off me if she has any questions.
I have no problems with NPs having unsupervised prescribing privileges. With all of the financial defenses I see from providers regarding their inability to function as gatekeepers when dealing with DTC fueled patients, I really wonder if the proper term is rubber stamper and not gatekeeper. With this as an underlying basis (i.e. patient safety and medical necessity are hardly the mantras that are currently being followed) the only conclusion that is left to be drawn is that objections are based on protecting the existing oligopoly.
Anonymous, sorry to disappoint you but this isn’t about helping my clients push drugs. Read my blog and you’ll see I’m no tool of the pharma industry or anyone else.
Well, Kevin, I can’t imagine he was talking about RNs since the context seems to clearly be about NPs. I think you misread him and I compounded the error by assuming that you meant NPs in your comment since any other interpretation of the original article didn’t even cross my mind. Since David Williams has commented in this thread, maybe he can clarify if he was only talking about prescription privileges for NPs or for all RNs.
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