Dean Potempa Responds to the Supreme Court Ruling to Uphold the Affordable Care Act

 

U-M School of Nursing Dean Kathleen Potempa, PhD, RN, FAAN, today issued a statement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act as Constitutional. 

 

“The ACA is a call to action for America’s Nurses, and for states to elevate and encourage their full participation in health delivery. The demand for nursing will increase as more Americans will have access to care. Nurses need to ‘step up’ to the challenge of improving care quality and clinical outcomes as we ‘bend the cost curve’ in health care, and as the capacity of our national provider base swells to accommodate some 30 million more Americans. Nurses must be full partners with their physician counterparts to drive better care at lower costs. Nurses must also assume leadership in care coordination, from preventive medicine to self–care, to health promotion. In fact, the entire value proposition of the ACA depends on these aspects of health care being improved.

 

As we re-imagine and recast the role of the nurse practitioner to make implementation of the ACA successful, states must assure that the nurse practitioner and other APRNs can practice to the full extent of their education and training, and be participatory in provider networks.  Physician providers alone will not be able to meet the demand created when this decision was handed down, and that is where our nurses come in.”