 The impact of nurse practitioner scope-of-practice laws on preventable hospitalizationsBenjamin J. McMichael Journal of Health Economics, 2025, vol. 103, issue C Abstract: The increased use of nurse practitioners (NPs) to provide healthcare represents an important policy option to expand access to care. However, restrictive scope-of-practice laws limit NPs’ ability to deliver care in about half of all states. I examine the effect of relaxing these laws (by granting NPs full practice authority) on hospital discharges for conditions classified as prevention quality indicators (PQIs) across 22 states between 2010 and 2019. PQIs measure hospital admissions that may be avoidable with timely outpatient care. I find that full practice authority reduces avoidable hospitalizations for diabetes and other chronic conditions, with particularly consistent effects among privately insured patients. Hospital stays for PQI conditions become longer on average, suggesting that relatively healthier patients are more likely to avoid hospitalization. These results indicate that full practice authority improves access to outpatient care and allows for more efficient use of inpatient resources. Keywords: Scope of practice; Nurse practitioner; Health law; Healthcare policy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:103:y:2025:i:c:s0167629625000797 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2025.103044 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier |
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