BELLEVUE, Wash., May 25, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- The Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation (NPHF) today issued a White Paper outlining key policy issues related to nurse practitioner clinics which have opened in pharmacy, grocery, and department store chains. The NPHF recognizes these services as an appropriate, important, and logical role for NPs. NPHF asks all stakeholders -- patients, providers, payers, regulators, policy makers, and others -- to support this model of healthcare delivery and to ensure its evolution is based on sound data.
The white paper, authored by Nancy Rudner Lugo, DrPH, NP, Salvatore J. Giorgianni, Pharm D, and Phyllis Arn Zimmer, MN, NP, FAAN, outlines four principal tenets:
1. NP services in retail settings are a practical and useful healthcare alternative, lowering the barriers to access by bringing affordable and accessible care to patients in a familiar, community-based environment. These services answer needs unmet by the current U.S. healthcare system.
2. NPs are educated, certified, and licensed to provide high quality healthcare within their scope of practice, with an emphasis on prevention and patient education. The high quality of NP care has been demonstrated over the 40-year history of the profession.
3. NP services in retail settings provide a much-needed community based gateway to other health-related services. While providing the episodic care services, NPs can also offer preventive care, education, health counseling, and referrals to patients who otherwise might not receive these services. Under ideal circumstances, everyone should have a healthcare home; NPs in retail centers can lead them there.
4. This evolving model of care merits careful, thoughtful, independent assessment of utilization, patient demographics, clinical outcomes, case finding, referral patterns, etc. to guide the national discourse on meeting people's healthcare needs in a convenient location with the appropriate level of care.
The development and evolution of this model must be driven by NP leadership. When society's needs change, guardians of health have an obligation to seek and support innovative ways to meet these needs. Innovation in the healthcare market warrants broad support.
View the complete White Paper on this issue at www.nphealthcarefoundation.org.
NPHF, a nonprofit philanthropic organization, helps improve policy and decision making through research and analysis.
The logo for the Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation is available at http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=2625