The largest
healthcare
strike in United States history recently came to an end. Kaiser Permanente has
arrived at
a tentative agreement with unions representing 75,000 healthcare employees in California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., who
walked off
their jobs in early October.
The unions cited inadequate staffing ratios as a primary motivator for the strike. Labor shortages, or suboptimal distributions of healthcare personnel, are common across the country.
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Government red tape is largely to blame. Cutting that red tape could make it easier for millions of patients to access care.
State officials can start with scope-of-practice laws, which determine the services healthcare providers are legally allowed to deliver. In many states, these laws restrict physician assistants and nurse practitioners from providing basic care without the supervision of a physician, even though they’re trained to do so on their own.
Freeing up these providers and allowing doctors to attend to more complex cases could greatly increase the supply of care.
It could even be lifesaving.
A recent study
found that relaxing scope-of-practice laws for nurse practitioners and physician assistants could have reduced premature deaths related to access to care by 12 per 100,000 individuals and 10 per 100,000 individuals, respectively, between 2005 and 2019.
States should also reevaluate interstate licensure. Forty-one states are part of the Nurse Licensure Compact, which allows nurses licensed in one participating state to practice in any other participating state. Nurses who wish to move into or practice in one of the nine non-participating states must apply for a separate license. These restrictions on the free flow of labor can exacerbate shortages.
On the federal level, lawmakers could relax the administrative burdens that force providers to spend valuable time dealing with electronic health records or completing paperwork — and not caring for patients.
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Each of these actions could help cure the provider shortages afflicting our healthcare system.
Sally C. Pipes (
@sallypipes
) is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All (Encounter 2020).
