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State regulatory boards, regulations, and midlevel practitioners in rural America

Marlene Karen Wilken, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

Abstract

Access to health care is a major item on the American political agenda. For rural Americans, the relative scarcity of health services is viewed as an issue of social justice. Three groups of professionals, collectively called midlevel practitioners (MLPs), have been credited with providing health care services to rural Americans, but the presence of regulatory barriers has limited their availability and utilization. The purpose of the research was to study the affects of such regulations on the availability of nurse practitioners, certified nurse midwives, and physician assistants. State boards of nursing and medicine were surveyed. In the first hypothesis, selected board characteristics were analyzed to determine their affect on the regulations of direct third-party reimbursement, authority to prescribe, and physician supervision requirements. In the second hypothesis, the regulations and other independent variables were analyzed to determine the affect such regulations have on the availability of MLPs. The findings indicated that board characteristics affect the presence or absence of restrictive regulations for MLPs and that MLP availability was affected by the presence of restrictive regulations.

Subject Area

Political science|Public administration|Nursing

Recommended Citation

Wilken, Marlene Karen, "State regulatory boards, regulations, and midlevel practitioners in rural America" (1993). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9416005.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9416005

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