Carmen R. Green, MD, is an alumna of the RWJF Health Policy Fellows program. She is the associate vice president and associate dean for health equity and inclusion at the University of Michigan Health System, and a professor of anesthesiology, obstetrics and gynecology, and health management and policy. This is part of a series of posts looking at diversity in the health care workforce.

More than a decade into the 21st century, Americans still face diminished health and tremendous variations in health care, depending on what they look like, where they come from, where they live, what they earn, and other factors. Significant and persistent variability in clinician decision-making also exists based upon these factors.

The reasons for these inequities lie in part in disparities in the infrastructure for screening, diagnosing, treating and supporting patients leading to unequal treatment.

In an increasingly aging, female, and diversifying society, it is vital to have a diverse workforce to not only help put patients of varying backgrounds at ease but to provide care that is responsive to their needs and to achieve the best health care outcomes. It may be difficult for underrepresented and vulnerable people to trust the health care system if the employees largely come from the same place and have one perspective. Some of those perceptions actually become realities as biases can negatively affect patients that are marginalized and lower on the socioeconomic totem pole.

Lori Melichar Gadkari, PhD, MA, is a senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), in the Research and Evaluation Unit.

Yesterday the New England Journal of Medicine published the results of a study co-funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. “Perspectives of Physicians and Nurse Practitioners on Primary Care Practice” finds that 96 percent of nurse practitioners and 76 percent of physicians agreed with the Institute of Medicine report recommendation that “nurse practitioners should be able to practice to the full extent of their education and training.” The new study is authored by Karen Donelan, ScD, EdM, Catherine M. DesRoches, DrPH, Robert S. Dittus, MD, MPH, and Peter Buerhaus, PhD, RN.

When asked how increasing the supply of nurse practitioners would potentially affect the United States health care system, the authors found that the majority of physicians (73%) said increasing the supply of primary care nurse practitioners (PCNPs) would lead to improvements in the timeliness of care. A much smaller majority of physicians (52%) said increasing the supply of PCNPs would lead to improvements in access to care for people in the country. 

However, the new survey found significant disagreement between primary care physicians and PCNPs about whether increasing the supply of PCNPs would improve patient safety and the effectiveness of care, and whether it would reduce costs. There was also a large professional divide about proposed changes to PCNPs’ scope of practice, putting PCNPs in leadership roles, and the quality of care that PCNPs provide.

Julie A. Fairman, PhD, RN, FAAN, is Nightingale Professor of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, and director of the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. She is a predoctoral fellow at the Penn Nursing Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research. Safiyyah Okoye, BSN, RN, and Jill Vanek, BSN, MSN, are students at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

The 2011 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report “Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health” pointed out that because nursing scope of practice regulations vary across states, and because there is little rationale for these variations, the federal government, through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, “is well situated to promote effective reforms [related to regulation of APRN scope of practice] by collecting and disseminating best practices from across the country and incentivizing their adoption.” 

The IOM recommended that the FTC and the Department of Justice review existing and proposed state regulations related to advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) to identify those that limit competition without contributing to the health and safety of the public, and urge such states to allow APRNs to provide care to patients in all circumstances in which they are qualified to do so. 

Created in 1914 to promote consumer protection by eliminating and preventing anticompetitive, unsafe, or deceptive business practices, the FTC is the logical agency to address scope of practice laws. The FTC’s responsibility is to promote competition, inform consumer choice, and protect consumer safety. All are directly related to APRN scope of practice regulations, including those mandating physician supervision and oversight of APRNs when there is not “a compelling consumer protection rationale” for doing so. That includes evidence justifying restrictions on APRNs’ ability to provide health care services that could override the public interests with regard to choice, cost or competition.

Elliott Fisher, MD, MPH, a health policy researcher and alumnus of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars program (1983-1985), was recently named director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice. Fisher coined the term “Accountable Care Organization” (ACO). In this Clinical Scholar Health Policy podcast, he discusses the origins of ACOs and the effort to develop them in the nation’s health care system. Watch his interview with RWJF Clinical Scholar Chileshe Nkonde-Price, MD, (2012-2014). The video is republished with permission from the Leonard Davis Institute.

This blog post offers perspectives from seven Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Nurse Faculty Scholars who attended TEDMED 2013 last week.

Seeing things in new and different ways will advance nursing practice, research, and education.  We need to think of creative strategies to raze perceived boundaries. One way for nurses to enter new frontiers is to engage in interprofessional dialogue with consumers, health care providers, researchers, entrepreneurs, technology experts, designers, and artists. We experienced this interchange at TEDMED 2013—an interprofessional conference for sharing and exploring solutions to health care’s most pressing challenges.

Collaboration is Key
Adejoke Ayoola: The opportunities to explore new advances in technology and interact with innovators remind me of an African Proverb, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” The outcome is more fulfilling with collaboration. By collaborating with stakeholders (e.g., community residents, community health workers, local agencies), research not only becomes more effective, it becomes more relevant to societal needs. Collaboration with my nursing colleagues promotes scholarly growth and may involve writing manuscripts or conducting smaller studies associated with a bigger study.

Nicholas Stine, MD, and Dave Chokshi, MD, MSc, writing on behalf of the New York Academy of Medicine Primary Care and Population Health Working Group.

The New York Academy of Medicine is the National Program Office for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program, which works to reduce population health disparities and improve the health of all Americans. The New York Academy recently conducted a survey of 17 thought leaders* in primary care and population health. In the first of five blog posts, we share a synthesis of what those leaders had to say. All quotes are printed with permission.

Defining Population Health: Many discussants cited the definition of population health developed by David Kindig, MD, PhD, as a reference point: “health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group.” Regardless of specific vantage point, there was a generally shared sentiment that population health should be thought of broadly and in common terms by a range of clinical and non-clinical stakeholders.

More discussants described a baseline framework of a clinical delivery system oriented around patients in a practice, in contrast with a public health system oriented around geographic communities. A more clinical, or “population medicine,” perspective often centered around evidence-based interventions and disease management categories so as to triage and allocate health care resources in a cost-effective manner.

Susan B. Hassmiller, RN, PhD, FAAN, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation senior adviser for nursing and director of the Future of Nursing: Campaign for Action, will be a featured speaker when the Institute for Healthcare Improvement hosts a webinar this Thursday, January 10. The webinar will explore how nurse practitioners or advanced practice nurses are being deployed and woven into new, interdisciplinary, team-based delivery designs.

Other panelists will include Patricia Gerrity, PhD, RN, FAAN, an alumna of the RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows program and a Raise the Voice Edge Runner. Gerrity is the director of Eleventh Street Family Health Services of Drexel University, and the associate dean for community programs at Drexel’s College of Nursing and Health Professions.

The webinar will be held from 2:00–3:00 p.m. EST.

Register for the webinar.
Read more about Gerrity’s work.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) recently released a video showcasing its Human Capital portfolio, which invests in innovative, diverse and inspired people who will shape health and health care research, policy and delivery for years to come. Watch the video below to learn more about RWJF Human Capital programs and the scholars and alumni who participate in them.

While policy-makers in Washington and in state capitals across the nation have been embroiled in a debate over health care reform, many aspects of the health care system have been evolving in response to economic and demographic pressures. The latest issue of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s ongoing Charting Nursing’s Future (CNF) series of policy briefs highlights a number of examples of that evolution, all related to nurses’ changing role in primary care.

The Institute of Medicine’s landmark report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change Advancing Health, noted that nurses “are poised to help bridge the gap between coverage and access, to coordinate increasingly complex care for a wide range of patients, to fulfill their potential as primary care providers to the full extent of their education and training, and to enable the full economic value of their contributions across practice settings to be realized.” In fact, as the CNF brief points out, “Nurses are already leading the way in keeping patients healthy, managing their diseases, and reducing their use of costly hospital care by increasing the availability and scope of primary care services.”

Last week, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) and The Alliance for Health Reform sponsored a briefing to discuss oral health care in the United States, particularly for children and other vulnerable populations.

The discussion was co-moderated by David Krol, MD, MPH, FAAP, RWJF Human Capital Portfolio team director and senior program officer. “Oral health is an integral part of overall health,” he said. It faces the same challenges as overall health care, including “racial, ethnic, geographic disparities in disease and access to care, financing challenges, issues of determining and maintaining quality of care, and workforce controversies.” Krol said he would like to see “all conversations on health and health care… naturally include oral health.”

In 2009, preventable dental conditions accounted for more than 830,000 emergency department visits nationwide, Julie Stitzel, MA, of the Pew Center on the States’ Children’s Dental Campaign told the audience. Children were the patients for 50,000 of those visits. “There’s a real opportunity for states to save money because these visits, again, are totally preventable,” she said. “We know that getting treated in an emergency room is much more costly than the care delivered in a dental office, and states are bearing a significant share of these expenses through Medicaid and other public programs.”