Nurses expanding scope of practice

[question111]

Hi,

I was just wondering, what if Hospital Corporations--such as HCA or Tenet for example--want to make their nurses expand their scope of work.

For example, many nurses can do some anesthesiology but many doctors groups are opposed to them and are lobbying the government to limit them.

Another example is primary care, where nurses want more independence.

So, what if a major hospital corporation wants their nurses to do more work? Will doctor lobby groups sue the corporation? Or can a company lobby a lot more powerfully than doctor groups? Will the company be allowed to expand the work a nurse can do?

Thank you

[Asystole RN]

Lobby groups typically do not utilize the judicial branch of the government to modify legislation.

Your question is very state dependent. In California for example the SOP is actually written in legislation, in Arizona the BON has discretionary control over the SOP. Healthcare legislation and lobbying is very complicated but in theory a company could out lobby and press through legislation against medical associations.

My mother is a registered nurse and lobbyist in California. She represents many various interests including nursing associations, individual hospitals, hospital associations, certain law enforcement associations, and even several medical associations.

[Rob72, ASN, RN]

The "Healthcare Lobby", specifically HCA Corporation, is why we have HIPAA. Yes, there is power there. However, IIRC, the AMA is second only to the TLA (Trail Lawyers Assn.) in raw available assets/PAC spending. In a tongue-in-cheek move, I believe we will see expanded practical expectations in Nursing, but there will be no clearly defined expansion of SoP, for the simple reason that expanding SoP would take funds away from AMA member, and Universities pushing the advanced practice programs.

Translation: you want/need to work, so you can be required to do pretty much anything by institutional policy. When something goes wrong, you're fired, and they hire another of the XX-thousand annual new-grads to replace you. Repeat.

[question111]

Ok thank you for both of your responses. I was just thinking, since nurses are cheaper to hire, I would think that hospital corporations would lobby for them to have more rights treating patients. I wonder why they don't, though.

Thank you for your thoughts, though.