[NPInfo] Alabama NP Article

Wed Jan 16 18:12:06 PST 2008

    Because Florida needed to be attached to the U.S.

        Florida is only slightly south of the south.  We have our embarrassing moments here, too.  If I could hack cold weather (I've tried repeatedly, I can't), I'd leave Florida post-haste.  I plan to go seasonal in 2009, become a migratory snow bird.  Sometimes I shake my head at the ignorance of the red states.  It isn't about politics, either, it is about ethnocentrism vs. worldly awareness.  Let's just say it isn't hard to be the pick of the litter in Florida or anywhere else in the south.
        As for the Civil War, all I can say is that it wasn't by random that the south lost!
            Jeff (in Blue Pinellas, in Red Florida).

Diana Galler <galdena at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
  Because Florida needed a neighbor 
Dena Galler

Calif NP wrote:
Someone please explain it to me again, why did we fight a civil war to keep
Alabama in the Union?
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Mittman" 
To: "NP Info" 
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 6:39 AM
Subject: Re: [NPInfo] Alabama NP Article

Huntsville Times ALABAMA.
That's the HUGE headline.
http://www.al.com/huntsvilletimes/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/
1200392126205940.xml&coll=1&thispage=1
Dave
On Jan 16, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Havens, Shelby wrote:

> Dave:
>
> Where was this article published? I'm puzzled by the title line
> that says "LPNs pitch idea to boost rural care."
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Shelby Havens, ARNP
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: npinfo-bounces at nurse.net [mailto:npinfo-bounces at nurse.net] On
> Behalf Of David Mittman
> Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 9:24 AM
> To: ACC Circle Circle; NPinfo
> Subject: [NPInfo] Alabama NP Article
>
>
> LPNs pitch idea to boost rural care
>
>
> Tuesday, January 15, 2008
> By STEVE DOYLE
> Times Staff Writer steve.doyle at htimes.com
> Nurses urge lawmakers to ease regulations
>
> Some local nurse practitioners say they have a prescription to help
> Alabama's medically underserved areas.
>
> On Monday night, about 100 nurse practitioners packed Huntsville's
> swanky Heritage Club to press for changes in how the state regulates
> their profession. Alabama's nurse practitioner rules are among the
> nation's strictest, limiting their ability to write prescriptions and
> requiring them to be paired with a collaborating physician.
>
> A proposed bill drafted by the Nurse Practitioners Alliance of
> Alabama would relax those rules and make it easier for trained nurse
> practitioners to work in poor, rural counties where medical care is
> scarce, said Cindy Cooke, the group's state president.
>
> "Our biggest goal is to increase access to health care," said Cooke,
> a nurse practitioner at Fox Army Health Center on Redstone Arsenal.
> "We want to attract quality people from those underserved areas,
> train them and send them back home."
>
> Cooke said Alabama's 1,400 nurse practitioners, who at minimum have a
> master's degree in nursing, could improve the state's dreadful
> ranking in health care access studies. One recent report placed
> Alabama behind the 49 other states and the District of Columbia at
> ensuring timely medical care for residents, she said.
>
> Lawmakers are listening.
>
> State Sen. Parker Griffith, D-Huntsville, is considering co-
> sponsoring the nurse practitioner bill. A bipartisan collection of
> state House members - Republicans Mike Ball, Mac McCutcheon and
> Howard Sanderford, and Democrat Butch Taylor - also showed up at the
> Heritage Club to listen.
>
> The legislative session begins Feb. 5.
>
> A retired cancer specialist, Griffith said nurse practitioners are
> qualified to treat most illnesses and could make a huge difference in
> rural counties that lack primary care doctors and obstetricians. He
> said he would like to see rural clinics run by nurse practitioners
> spring up across Alabama, linked by Internet to medical schools and
> teaching hospitals so the nurse can quickly get advice from
> specialists if needed.
>
> "The health care system needs improvement, and this does that,"
> Griffith said Monday. "It's not magic; it's just getting people who
> are trained into areas that other health care providers will not go."
>
> Nurse practitioners will always work closely with doctors, Cooke
> said, but they shouldn't be required by the state to have a formal,
> collaborative agreement. The 10-year-old rule means the nurses have
> to get their collaborating doctor to sign off on everything from
> mammograms to sports physicals, she said.
>
> Drugs are another sore subject: Nurse practitioners in Alabama cannot
> write prescriptions for any potentially addictive medication,
> including cough medicine with codeine.
>
> "It's very restrictive," Cooke said. "We need to be able to write
> that in order to adequately take care of our patients."
>
> Alabama, Florida and Missouri are the only states that do not allow
> nurse practitioners to write prescriptions for narcotic medicines,
> she said.
>
> The current rules have caused problems for at least two local
> nonprofit agencies: the Community Free Clinic and HEALS clinics for
> low-income students.
>
> Free Clinic Director Shotsie Platt said she'd love nothing more than
> to have nurse practitioners working alongside volunteer doctors at
> the clinic on Franklin Street. But with no physician willing to give
> the OK, the idea has been stuck in neutral for eight years. When the
> doctors get swamped, some patients will continue to have to be turned
> away, Platt said.
>
> HEALS Executive Director Tracey Wright said her group had to close
> its clinic at New Hope Elementary last fall after the clinic's nurse
> practitioner lost her collaborating physician.
>
> "We still see those children," Wright said Monday, "but they have to
> come into town" for treatment at another HEALS clinic.
>
>
> © 2008 The Huntsville Times
>
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