Cost savings not resulting from nurse practitioner expansion

A recent study from the University of California San Francisco suggests that the expansion of nurse practitioners’ scope of practice may not save as much money as previously thought.

The study also found that a new law allowing NPs to prescribe medication has had no impact on “medication adherence.”

Increasing the number of NPs and broadening their scope of practice might lead one to presume that costs would decline since NPs tend to charge less than physicians.

However, the study found that authorizing NPs independent scope of practice correlated to an increase in healthcare costs of up to 4 percent.

Read more here.