Province announces supports for nurse practitioners to open their own clinics

Nurse practitioners in the province are hoping to soon be publicly reimbursed for the services they offer in their own clinics, after the government announced new supports on Wednesday.

In a press conference, Health Minister Adriana LaGrange said the province is introducing a new payment model to encourage nurse practitioners to open their own clinics, take on patients and "offer services based on their scope of practice, training, and expertise." 

"These immediate actions will help to address urgent pressures and strengthen primary health care, as well as improving access to family medicine," said LaGrange. 

The plans follow recommendations from a report drawn from the Modernizing Alberta's Primary Health Care System (MAPS) initiative, a series of advisory panels that began last year, which sought to identify gaps in the province's health-care system. 

LaGrange said that nurse practitioners play a vital role in the province's health care, and that their training allows them to provide a wide range of health-care services including treating acute and chronic medical conditions, prescribing medications, and undertaking preventative care. 

Susan Prendergast, president of the Nurse Practitioner Association of Alberta, said the announcement marked a new direction in the province's health-care reform. 

"It is exactly what we've been asking for and … it could have happened much sooner. But the fact that we're moving forward with it now is just so relieving," she said.

Prendergast said that details as to how exactly nurse practitioners will be compensated, and how the plan will be rolled out, still need to be clarified, but she hopes the move will ease the stress on the province's health-care system. 

With the new government supports, Prendergast said that nurse practitioners who open their own clinics will be able to offer care to patients who have not been able to access a family physician.

"The long-term goal would be to have providers available in rural and remote communities as well as the urban centres," she said.

Nurse practitioners currently operate out of primary care networks or physician offices to offset patient loads. But within this system, they don't have a direct billing opportunity, said Prendergast. 

Miriam Neufeld is a nurse practitioner based in Camrose. 

She runs her own independent practice called the Art of Caring clinic, but can't bill Alberta Health for her services — patients are instead billed directly.

She hopes the new actions announced by the government will change that. 

"I am very excited to see how they plan on completing that funding model," said Neufeld.

"Definitely in our rural communities [there has] been a lot of struggle with not being able to direct bills to government … so if [the government] makes a business plan agreement with us that we're able to be reimbursed for our services, that's fair."

The province has allocated $125 million over three years to implement recommendations from its MAPS report.