The "invisible work force"

[Nurse Ratched, RN]

See full article: http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3367294

These days, health care is all about information -- so what do you do when the information is incomplete?

That's often the case when it's a nurse practitioner or physician's assistant who sees a patient, said local nurse practitioner Betsy Stapleton.

She said these health care providers often have paperwork filed under the doctor who supervises them, making it hard to measure how well or even how much they're doing.

[RosesrReder, BSN, MSN, RN]

Quote:

”We're this invisible work force,” Stapleton said.

She said part of the reason has to do with insurance company rules. Each insurer has a different way of doing things, but often they want the physician's name, she said. She added that billing rules may make it financially advantageous, as well as simpler, to bill under the physician's name. This is changing. Medicare, for example, will require the actual person seeing the patient to be listed starting in May 2007.

This will be great!