“Despite the prominence of nursing’s role in the delivery of patient care, nurses are virtually invisible when it comes to payment — nursing care is usually bundled with other facility or operational expenses despite the role of nursing in lowering the cost of care,” the organization noted in a May 26 statement.
As such, it has outlined three key ways to move the needle on the issue:
- Increase use of the National Provider Identifier as a unique nurse identifier, which allows providers and Advanced Practice Registered Nurses to bill CMS for their services to patients. The NPI must be registered by a provider, but using it raises the visibility of what nurses do.
- The ANA advocates for the direct reimbursement of nurses and calls for funding and grants to be allocated to nurse-led projects and research. The association’s foundational arm also provides grants for this purpose.
- Elevate the economic value of the nursing profession with extended research efforts into different ways to quantify the impact of nursing as a whole and present that data to Congress for garnering legislative visibility and support. This effort is being led by the ANA Enterprise Research Council.
