In the last months of 2011, Congress worked diligently to pass the various legislative initiatives; going by the names of mini-bus, omnibus, and continuing resolution; to fund the federal government through to September 30, 2012 and closing out the FY 2012 budget process.
On November 29th, the U.S. House approved by voice vote H.R. 2465, the Federal Workers Compensation Modernization and Improvement Act. The Act, along with various changes to the federal workers compensation program, includes a provision that would allow reimbursement of services provided by APRNs.
Did you know that many hospitals have special supervision requirements for their outpatient services – including nursing care? Special requirements for “direct” supervision by physicians and other health care providers particularly affect nursing services, observation units, and critical access hospitals (CAHs). ANA has advocated to rescind or improve these requirements, which can affect nurses’ ability to provide IV therapy, chemotherapy, and other nursing care in hospital outpatient and observation units. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently issued a final rule maintaining the requirement, with minor changes.
The 2012 elections are now less than 10 months away. These elections are important to watch due to redistricting on the congressional level and, of course, the presidential race.
The Congressional Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reductions, aka the super committee, failed to meet its congressional obligation to vote on a plan for $1.2 trillion in budget cuts during the last weeks of November. As you may remember, the U.S. Congress signed the Budget Control Act of 2011 into law this past summer creating the bipartisan 12 member committee. The super committee had been charged with finding at least $1.2 trillion in additional deficit reductions by the end of the year. Their failure to achieve a consensus triggers a series of automatic budget cuts in the amount of 1.2 trillion dollars which will go into effect in 2013.
ANA’s PAC and complementary political education program are key to ANA’s legislative success in the U.S. Congress and a strong part of ANA’s overall success. ANA-PAC builds relation¬ships and provides bipartisan support for pro-nursing Members of Congress. In addition to increasing nursing’s visibility in the political arena, ANA-PAC demonstrates to policymakers that we are se¬rious about our issues.
