Growing ranks: Benefits of collaboration with nurse practitioners

Those benefits include freed-up time for patients with more complicated health problems.

By Jay Greene, AMNews staff. March 12, 2001.

Team Players
Physicians' interaction with allied health care professionals: Hiring allied health professionals to handle some of the routine well-patient visits, history-taking and routine test ordering is freeing doctors to, once again, practice medicine to the fullest of their abilities.

Family physician Rodney Hough, MD, and nurse practitioner Joan Rice work together as colleagues, referring and consulting on patients within the confines of Brookwood Family Medicine in Carlisle, Pa. They work under a broad collaborative agreement that helps determine which type of patients Rice sees and when a referral or consultation is necessary.

Walter Koltun, MD, a colon and rectal surgeon, and Marjorie Lebo, a nurse practitioner, also work together at Milton S. Hershey Medical Center at Penn State University in Hershey, Pa. Dr. Koltun performs the surgeries while Lebo handles most of the typical pre-op and post-op duties.

Dr. Hough and Dr. Koltun are among hundreds of physicians who have enlisted the help of allied health professionals in their practices. Both physicians say their collaborative team approaches -- in which physicians and nurse practitioners work side by side in the same office -- provide good quality care for their patients while giving them more time to spend on serious medical cases. They also said their practices' bottom line has benefited from the use of allieds.

"We treat them here as colleagues. They are invaluable," said Dr. Hough, who has employed nurse practitioners for six years. "They have areas of strength and nonstrength. The key is trust. They are smart enough to know not to exceed their bounds."

Nationally, the number of nurse practitioners has increased over the past 10 years from 30,000 to about 65,000, according to the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners. Some 85% work in ambulatory settings and the majority are in primary care, the AANP said. [...]