{"id":307738,"date":"2026-10-16T05:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T05:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/307738\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T05:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T05:34:18","slug":"ahead-of-midterms-pennsylvania-candidates-back-np-independence-in-survey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/307738\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahead of midterms, Pennsylvania candidates back NP independence in survey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gov. Josh Shapiro called for full practice authority for NPs who have worked under a physician for three years in his 2025-26 budget proposal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The PAC gave money to two candidates this cycle, Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward (R-Westmoreland County) and Rep. Peter Schweyer (D-Lehigh County), according to state campaign finance reports cited by the Capital-Star.<\/p>\n

No full practice authority bill had passed the Senate since Ward took over the chamber’s leadership, WFMZ reported in 2024<\/a>, when a Ward spokesperson said the senator \u201ccontinues to do her due diligence on the matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rural funding argument<\/p>\n

At the Erie event, coalition member Tammy Huey, CRNP, who practiced in rural Venango County, said states with full practice authority receive $497 in federal rural health funding per rural resident on average, compared with $67 in Pennsylvania, citing an unnamed analysis.<\/p>\n

\u201cPennsylvanians need to know which candidates will support unlocking this money for rural health care \u2013 and vote accordingly,\u201d Huey said in the announcement.<\/p>\n

The same two figures appear in a July blog post on Judge.com<\/a> by a Penn Medicine nurse practitioner, which attributes them to \u201csome RHT Program estimates\u201d without naming a source.<\/p>\n

The money comes from the Rural Health Transformation Program<\/a>, a $50 billion fund created by the 2025 budget reconciliation law that pays states $10 billion a year from fiscal 2026 through 2030. Half of each year’s money is split equally among states.<\/p>\n

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) allocates the rest by formula, and scope of practice carries a 1.75% weight<\/a> in that formula. The factor averages state scores for NPs, physician assistants, pharmacists and dental hygienists.<\/p>\n

For NPs, a state earns 0 points for restricted practice, 50 for reduced practice and 100 for full practice<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania’s February 2026 rural health plan<\/a> lists the state at 50 points for NPs, 0 for physician assistants, 0 for pharmacists and 50 for dental hygienists. The plan commits the state to policy change on a physician assistant licensure compact and lists no commitment on scope of practice.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania received $193 million<\/a> in the program’s first year, or $78 per rural resident against a national average of $157, WESA reported in June<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Per-resident awards were generally smallest in states with the largest rural populations, according to a KFF analysis<\/a>, because half of each year’s money is divided evenly regardless of need. Texas, which has the most rural residents and the largest total award, received $66 per rural resident.<\/p>\n

CMS rescores each state’s policy and initiative factors every year and is due to announce fiscal 2027 allocations by Oct. 31<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The physician position<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Medical Society (PAMED) says on its scope of practice page<\/a> that expanding practice authority for non-physician providers \u201ccan lead to safety concerns, increased costs and an increase in unnecessary testing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The society cites research finding $43 higher monthly spending per member for patients with non-physician primary care providers, along with American Medical Association mapping that it says shows NPs tend to practice in the same areas as physicians regardless of state scope laws.<\/p>\n

In a 2019 op-ed in The Morning Call<\/a>, then-PAMED President Danae Powers, M.D., wrote that the society would support limits on what physicians can charge for collaborative agreements but would not accept eliminating them.<\/p>\n

The PAC says 27 states let NPs practice without physician collaboration; the Capital-Star counted 28 in June.<\/p>\n

NPs registered 5,097 new practices nationwide from Jan. 1 through Sept. 26, 2026, nearly six times as many as in the same period of 2019, according to a Medical Boulevard analysis of federal National Provider Identifier registry data<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Full-practice states had the most new NP practices per resident, but Florida and Texas, which both restrict NP practice, led in total registrations. The analysis counts registrations, not confirmed openings.<\/p>\n

In a survey of physicians, many said NP independence has gone too far<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What’s next<\/p>\n

All 203 state House seats and 25 Senate seats are on the Nov. 3 ballot.<\/p>\n

The two-year legislative session ends Nov. 30<\/a>, and bills not enacted by then must be reintroduced in the next session. The House calendar lists five voting days before that deadline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Josh Shapiro called for full practice authority for NPs who have worked under a physician for three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-307738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}