Shortage of Doctors an Obstruction to Obama Goals, NYT, April 26, 2009
Despite ambitions of universal health coverage, the Obama administration quickly learned that the current supply of primary care physicians can not accommodate the expected increase in patients. One proposal that the President is taking very seriously is increasing the supply of Nurse Practitioners. However, many state laws will not allow NPs to take on the most time consuming clinical services of primary care physicians. I thought this was interesting given our conversation about how federalism can block policies from moving forward because of an inevitable clash between state and federal policymakers and legislation. As federalism rears its ugly head in this great debate in the U.S., federalism is not unique to the U.S. and is also causing a rift in the primary care sector in Australia.
In Australia there has been a major delay in reforming primary care because conflicts between federal and state healthcare policy are preventing nurse practitioners from signing off on prescriptions. A 2008 Australian study found more than two thirds of nurse practitioners in Australia report their role is "extremely limited" because of a clash between state and federal policy, restricting their rights for writing prescriptions and referrals for patients. Lifting these restrictions will help streamline the clinical process and conserve health dollars for the state and consumers by avoiding costly pharmacy prescriptions. In May 2009, the Australian government announced that this policy may soon change.
- Michelle Shal
Follow the money. As I was trying to get a handle on the numbers of MDs vs. nurse practitioners, and then trying to sort this out in terms of population numbers in this very spread-out continent, I came upon the following:
ReplyDeletehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090520/ap_on_re_as/as_australia_saved_by_drill
No the dingo didn't eat my baby, but the drill saved it!