News

Indiana NPs Fill Shortfall of Physicians

At Riggs Community Health Center in Indiana, nurse practitioners are being relied on more and more to fill the gap caused by a shortage of family physicians.  "There is a huge gap of medical providers in our country and nurse practitioners certainly help to fill that gap," said Veronique LeBlanc, president and chief executive officer of Riggs. Nancy Edwards, nurse practitioner at Riggs, said they refer patients to physicians when there are cases they cannot manage on their own.  "I don't think we will ever take the place of primary care physicians," she said. "But we can help to relieve some of the backlog."  The facility has had such luck with this approach to health care that it has hired more NPs over the years.  In fact, NPs now outnumber family physicians at the facility.  According to LeBlanc, "We understand and value the role that nurse practitioners play and we've had great success in hiring nurse practitioners."   Click to read the full article.