Nurse-Run Clinics Provide Cost-Effective, High Quality Care

The American Nurses Association has recently issued a statement commending the Joint Commission for their recognition of nurse-led clinics as primary care medical homes. The Commission's accreditation standards define primary-care clinicians in primary care medical homes as “a doctor of medicine or doctor of osteopathy, advanced practice nurse or physician assistant.”

This accreditation is in line with the scope-of-practice recommendations in the IOM report, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. In addition, the Affordable Care Act recognized medical homes as a good way to provide cost-effective, high quality patient-centered care.

The federal health care reform law recently provided a $1.5 million grant to Sheridan Health Services outside Denver. Sheridan Health is one of the first nurse-run primary care facility in the country to be set up under the new law. Accepting fees on a sliding basis, the clinic provides much needed care to a low-income area. In the first month of operation, the nurses had seen 200 patients.