The Development of Advanced Practice Nursing: The Role of Health Care Reform
Lauren Minimo
Azusa Pacific University

The Development of Advanced Practice Nursing: The Role of Health Care Reform The purpose of this paper is to describe the role of health care reform with regards to the evolution and development of advanced practice nursing (APN) in the United States. Foundational aspects prominent in the development of defined APN roles include the health needs in society, support for innovation in health care, governmental health policy and regulation, health workforce supply and demand, and the development of advanced education, among other factors (Ketefian et al., 2001). APNs are comprised of nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, …show more content…

The Kerr-Mills Act of the 1960s provided federal grants to states for health care for the elderly and poor. These grants eventually resulted in the creation of Medicaid and Medicare, programs that enabled the elderly and underprivileged to have access to essential health care provider needs (Cass, 2012). This was also the time that community health centers rose to prominence, an important era in the foundations of the current APN role in health care (Ketefian et al., 2001). President Clinton’s Health Security Act of the 1990s enabled for much-needed competition to occur between private insurance providers, and the needs of the patient were cast into the national spotlight once again (Cass, 2012). In 1997, the Balanced Budget Act granted Nurse Practitioners (NPs) Primary Care Provider status, enabling NPs to directly bill Medicare for their services (Christian et al., 2007). On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), one of the most historic overhauls of national health care since the 1960s (Kaiser Family Foundation [KFF], 2011). The central tenet of the PPACA is that every individual should have access to affordable and available health care, and must maintain a minimal health insurance plan, either through employer or government-sponsored insurance plans. The PPACA was immediately scrutinized on a national level and a majority of the states filed