FTC Letter Bolsters Nurse Practitioners' Case
Posted
over 14 years ago
by
Stanley F Whittaker
Agency supports bid to lift Florida's restrictions on full practice, but will bill be heard?
Nurse practitioners in Florida got a lift this week from a Federal Trade Commission letter that branded House Bill 4103 "a pro-competitive improvement in the law."
HB 4103, sponsored by state Rep. Daphne Campbell, D-Miami, would lift restrictions on Florida's nurse practitioners and authorize them to practice at their "full scope."
While agreeing with a Florida Department of Health report which found that reducing current supervision requirements "would allow more access to health care," the FTC lambasted the 2006 Legislature for applying the physician-driven restrictions in the first place.
"Unnecessary restrictions ... are likely to reduce the availability, and raise the prices, of health care services," stated the FTC letter, which was addressed to Campbell.
"Absent evidence that the heightened restrictions were, and still are, necessary to protect the public, it appears that HB 4103 would benefit Florida consumers by facilitating the provision of lower cost and more accessible health-care services."
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