The Maryland Regional Action Coalition Recommendation #1 subcommittee needs a member of MCNP

The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health is the first Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on nursing. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) partnered with the IOM on this initiative and released a report in October 2010. This report, based on evidence, created an unprecedented opportunity for nursing.

There were four key messages:

1. Nurses should be able to practice to full extent of their education and training
2. Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression
3. Nurses should be full partners with physicians and others in redesigning U.S. health care
4. Effective workforce planning and policy-making require better data collection and an information infrastructure

To implement the recommendation, the RWJF’s Campaign for Action calls for Regional Action Coalitions (RACs). RAC’s are organized groups of both nursing and non-nursing leaders and stakeholders working at the local, state, and regional levels to implement the recommendations of the IOM. RACs are being developed across the nation and Maryland’s RAC steering committee and subcommittee leaders met for the first time on April 25th, 2011.

Neil Meltzer, President Sinai Hospital and Sr. VP of LifeBridge Health, Dr. Janet Allan, Dean of the Univerity of Maryland School of Nursing, Lynn Reed, Executive Director of the Governor’s Workforce Investment Board, and Pat Travis, President of the Maryland Nurses Association are co-chairing the RAC. There will be nine subcommittees to represent each recommendation made by the IOM:

• Remove scope-of-practice barriers
• Expand opportunities for nurses to lead & diffuse collaborative improvement efforts
• Implement nurse residence programs
• Increase the proportion of nurses with a BSN to 80% by 2020
• Double the number of nurses with a doctorate by 2020
• Lifelong learning
• Prepare & enable nurses to lead change to advance health
• Build infrastructure for collection & analysis of inter-professional health care workforce data

Along with a non-nursing colleague, I will be leading the Maryland Regional Action Coalition Recommendation #1 subcommittee. We plan to work on all aspects of removing practice barriers that may include 1) Medicare changes to permit APRNs to perform more services, 2) reimbursement parity between APRNs and MDs, 3) reforming scope-of-practice regulations, 4) obtaining financial assistance for APRN adoption of EHR, 5) requiring insurers to put APRNs on provider panels, 6) identifying anticompetitive practices, etc.

Shannon Reedy Idzik, DNP, CRNP
Assistant Professor
Co-director, Adult and Gerontological Nurse Practitioner Program
University of Maryland School of Nursing
655 W. Lombard St.
Room 345D
Baltimore, MD 21201
o. 410-706-8129
f. 410-706-0344
idzik@son.umaryland.edu