Introduction
By offering healthcare services independently and as members of health providers that include doctors of nursing practice and nurses, healthcare professionals contribute to American healthcare. The burden of giving diagnoses, prescriptions, treatments, consultations, and other services might be shared by doctors and advanced registered nurse practitioners (ARNPs) by increasing their scope of practice (Ortiz, 2018). In regions with significant physician shortages, such as country places, where scarcity has persisted and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, ARNPs operating at the level at which they are trained might aid in reducing inequities in healthcare access.
Discussion
Increasing the practice scope does not affect the quality of health outcomes. Highly qualified and effective ARNPs may positively impact access to and use of primary healthcare services in rural regions. Especially in rural and disadvantaged locations, the improved availability and decreased costs can justifiably merit enhanced nurse practitioner autonomy. Expanding the scope of practice for ARNPs might increase the availability of primary healthcare services in rural regions. It is conceivable to conclude that an extended range of services can improve provider supply, access to health care and use, and quality of treatment after carefully examining how it affects the utilization of healthcare services.
One of the most effective solutions is the use of telehealth. Over the past 20 years, telehealth has been utilized more to provide healthcare access (Watts, 2021). This was not the case with palliative care (PC), as the delicate nature of the interactions made telemedicine unorthodox and unworkable (Watts, 2021). Medical PC telehealth approaches have been evolving due to the restricted PC availability to underserved and rural populations and encouraging PC telehealth investigations.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the COVID-19 epidemic has dramatically expedited the usage and use of telemedicine in the medical field, particularly in PC (Watts, 2021). Clinicians, managers, and others concur that telehealth will stay and will probably continue to be widely used and improved outside of rural regions.
References
Ortiz, J., Hofler, R., Bushy, A., Lin, Y. L., Khanijahani, A., & Bitney, A. (2018). Impact of nurse practitioner practice regulations on rural population health outcomes. Healthcare, 6(2), p. 65.
Watts, A., K., Malone, E., Dionne‐Odom, J. N., McCammon, S., Currie, E., Hicks, J.,… & Bakitas, M. (2021). Can you hear me now?: improving palliative care access through telehealth. Research in Nursing & Health, 44(1), 226-237.