Review of nurse practitioner laws

Lamp, The, April, 2008

The Federal Labor government will consider removing barriers that limit the role of nurse practitioners, says Health Minister Nicola Roxon.

A spokesman for the minister told The Weekend Australian newspaper that Labor would consider nurse practitioner changes as part of its overall health reform agenda.

The spokesman was responding to a study that shows nurse practitioners are being held back because federal law does not recognise state legislation authorising them to prescribe drugs and refer patients for tests or to receive specialist assessment.

The lack of a harmonised national legal framework is slowing the growth in the number of nurse practitioners, says the study conducted under the leadership of Professor Glenn Gardner from Queensland University of Technology's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation.

Discordant state and federal laws mean that while a nurse practitioner is permitted under state law to prescribe a drug for a patient, the script is not eligible for a Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme subsidy and the patient has to pay the full cost of the drug.

Likewise, if a nurse practitioner refers a patient for a test, or to a specialist, those referrals are not recognised by Medicare because no nurse practitioner has a Medicare provider number.

Professor Gardner's study surveyed all 238 nurse practitioners as at September last year and achieved a 90% response rate.

Two thirds said their role was 'extremely limited' by the misaligned laws.

Professor Gardner's data shows nurse practitioners have been most rapidly taken up in NSW, where there were 104 as at last September--nearly double the number in the next biggest state, Western Australia.