Earlier this week, the Senate and Assembly Health Committees took
testimony from the Wisconsin Hospital Association, advanced practice nurses, patient advocates, a Wisconsin manufacturer and physicians regarding newly revised legislation creating an umbrella title for advanced practice nurses and making various changes in state law impacting the practice of advanced practice nurses in Wisconsin.
The legislation, Senate Bill 394 and Assembly Bill 396, creates a new umbrella title, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse (APRN), for all four advanced practice nursing roles in Wisconsin and provides better clarity and certainty in Wisconsin law for advanced practice nurses and their employers in Wisconsin.
During in-person testimony provided by WHA General Counsel Matthew Stanford, WHA thanked the advanced practice nursing coalition for working with WHA over the last several years to address concerns previously raised by the legislation. The bill’s authors, Rep. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) highlighted the work that has been done to address WHA’s concerns.
“If you are a health care facility and you would like the collaborating physician role to be in your facility, then you have that right. If you are a hospital system and you want your nurse practitioners to be under that role, then we can put that in place,” said Rep. Rachael Cabral-Guevara regarding one change that was made in the legislation to address stakeholder concerns raised in previous years.
“We have worked with WHA and others who, in the past, have expressed concerns with the bill as it was written, to address those concerns,” said Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) about this session’s version of the legislation.
In testimony before the committee, Stanford outlined nearly two-decades-worth of advocacy work WHA has done to improve the practice environment for advanced practice nurses in Wisconsin and remove regulatory burdens that impact patient care and provider workflow. For more information on WHA’s position on the legislation, read the
testimony.
“WHA has prioritized addressing regulatory complexity regarding APRN practice because it impacts not only APRNs, the hospitals and clinics they work in, and our patients, but in many cases adds unnecessary regulatory burden on physicians,” said Stanford. “Similarly, impacts on physician administrative tasks and documentation burden—including documentation of a collaborative relationship—has been a key consideration in WHA’s evaluation of the APRN Modernization Act.”