The analyzed article looks at various ways of billing for NPs and physician assistants (PAs), also discussing self-pay options for patients. Olivierez (2017) looks at three reimbursement types provided by Medicare – direct pay, “incident to,” and split or share expenses. There are many reasons why patients would choose or have to pay themselves. However, the majority of such situations occur in emergencies when patients do not have insurance due to financial limitations (Olivierez, 2017).
For nurses, the option of self-pay is also abundant with problems, as pricing for self-paying and insured patients often differs (Olivierez, 2017). As such, the advice for NPs is to keep the rate of self-paying patients in one’s practice under half of all visits (Olivierez, 2017). In contrast to the research by Bellot et al. (2017), this article does not advocate for NP’s evolvement as primary care providers.
In fact, the main distinction between the two sources is the view of non-physician providers in a medical organization. Olivierez (2017) agrees that NPs and PAs are vital to medical practice. However, he argues that their reduced salary expenses and insurance costs are what make these positions especially valuable. Thus, it is apparent that advocacy for NPs’ role in patient health is not the main idea of the article.
Bellot et al. (2017) state that lower salaries are a problem that nurses face due to these considerations. They show that NPs’ practice is invaluable due to certified nurses’ level of professionalism and education. The core idea of the study by Bellot et al. (2017) is to show why and how NPs should achieve better reimbursement rates while also increasing people’s access to healthcare.
References
Bellot, J., Valdez, B., Altdoerffer, K., Quiaoit, Y., Bronzell-Wynder, T., & Cunningham, P. (2017). Does contracting with managed care organizations remain a barrier for nurse practitioners? Nursing Economics, 35(2), 57-63.
Olivierez, M. (2017). Coding and billing for NP and PA providers in your medical practice. Web.