Abstract
For decades, organizations representing advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) have lobbied state legislatures to allow APRNs to practice to the full extent of their education and training. Typically, this means removing statutory requirements for collaborative agreements so that APRNs can both practice and prescribe without physician supervision. Changing law is never easy, but changing the way health care has been administered for the past 100 years is even more difficult. The difficulty in passing APRN legislation is largely due to physician groups, such as the American Medical Association and state medical societies, which have historically opposed bills on the state level that would allow APRNs to practice and prescribe independently. Below is a case study exploring West Virginia’s battle to grant APRNs independence in prescribing. First, we will explore Senate Bill 516 (SB 516), an APRN bill introduced in 2015 that aimed to grant APRNs independent prescriptive authority. After being amended, however, the bill severely restricted West Virginia APRNs’ ability to prescribe independently and moved oversight of APRNs under the Board of Medicine. Next, we will discuss the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) February 10, 2016, letter to West Virginia Senator Kent Leonhardt, which outlines the FTC’s criticisms of SB 516, as amended, and concludes that SB 516 raises anticompetitive concerns (Loa, Jin, & Feinstein, 2016, p. 8). Lastly, we will analyze House Bill 4334 (HB 4334), a 2016 West Virginia bill that was successful in granting APRNs independent prescribing.
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