How Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants help bring value to the CV ASC

Today a majority of cardiovascular physician practices employ mid-level practitioners to one degree or another.

For the most part from my experience these providers are often underutilized and under recognized for their knowledge, scope of practice and experience they can leverage for the growth of the practice and patient utilization of the OBL/ASC.

Practices based in metropolitan centers face competition from multiple practices in the area as well as regional location to local hospitals.

Rural practices often face the need to have multiple outreach clinics requiring significant nonproductive travel time for the physician.

In many situations the mid-level providers can and should be given greater autonomy to operate outreach clinics within the rules and regs of that State.

State laws vary and should be followed in practice but often these rules and regs have not been reviewed or considered how they relate to a given practice.

Mid-level providers in the cardiovascular space often come prepared with years of experience in the field and have proven themselves to provide equivalent care to their physician counterparts when a good collaborative arrangement has been predetermined.

These providers can establish thriving outreach practices in otherwise under served or poorly served community locations by leveraging the ever growing network of primary care mid-level providers as well as physicians in the area.