Nurse practitioner Ruby Houck opened her medical clinic in Bertrand in 2000 knowing she would have to — according to law — find a doctor to be her collaborating physician.
“I asked every physician to that lived in my county — eight different people — but no one would agree to sign on,” she told the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee on Thursday. “The doctors did not see a need for another health care facility in the county.”
Finally, another doctor agreed to collaborate with her, and her practice grew by the week, she said. But in 2004, the doctor sent a letter saying he no longer wanted to collaborate, and she was left again to search. She contacted nine clinics with multiple physicians and five other individual doctors who all declined because of no interest, being too busy or having employer restrictions against collaboration.
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Houck and several other nurse practitioners told the committee about the problems they have had in finding collaborating doctors, or having doctors charge them thousands of dollars to sign a collaboration agreement.
They asked the committee to move to the Legislature LB753, a bill that would allow nurse practitioners to practice without an agreement with a physician after five years, if the person’s record were free of disciplinary action.
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