It’s Time to Give Nurse Practitioners Authority to Deliver the Healthcare Texas Needs

Common-sense values and free market thinking still prevail in Texas, even as our great state grows and modernizes. And yet, when it comes to something as crucial as access to the healthcare Texas families need, a powerful doctors’ group continues to protect an unnecessary, outdated law that’s keeping trained, highly qualified medical professionals from providing care to people in the parts of the state that need help the most.

Texas must attract more healthcare providers, particularly for the most underserved areas. Unfortunately, an unnecessary mandate has imposed a barrier that keeps about half of our state’s primary care workforce – nurse practitioners – from delivering the care that we desperately need.

Despite decades of peer-reviewed studies proving that nurse practitioners deliver safe, effective care, Texas law continues to require Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs), also known as nurse practitioners, to contract with a physician – often at an exorbitant cost – simply to deliver the care for which they are trained.

While state requirements for on-site physician supervision were removed years ago, Texas law still requires these contracts. And they’re virtually useless. For physicians to collect a fee from APRNs, sometimes in the thousands of dollars, essentially all they have to do is have one phone call with the nurse practitioner once a month.

It's a charade! The financial contracts don’t offer any additional supervision, consultation, teamwork, or value for the patients.

With Texas’ population continuing to expand and growing older, the need for well-trained medical professionals is omnipresent. Despite all this, powerful interest groups are focused on maintaining a status quo that leaves millions of Texans without adequate access to care, even as more nurse practitioners are driven out of the state.

This legislative session, several bipartisan bills have been introduced, which AARP Texas is proud to support -- to modernize our laws to address our state’s healthcare workforce challenges and make it easier for more new clinics to open, and our other much-needed healthcare facilities, such as rural hospitals, to stay in operation.

It's way past time for the Legislature to act! For many years, AARP has been on the record as a vocal advocate for full practice authority for APRNs. Preventing APRNs from full practice authority is a long overdue, outdated policy perspective. Allowing APRNs to practice at the top of their license is proven to be safe and alleviates the strain on access to care, based on its successful implementation in 27 states, the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, as well as by the Veterans Administration.

According to a 2023 survey, 83 percent of Texas over the age of 50 support modernizing these outdated rules and want to allow nurse practitioners to serve as the primary care providers for patients.

On behalf of the 2.5 million AARP members in Texas, we urge the state Legislature to approve legislation this year to allow nurse practitioners to practice completely within their scope of practice at the top of their license. Doing so would be consistent with the common-sense values and free market sentiments that stand throughout the Lone Star State.