Tag: Best Practices

Who Should Do What? Scope of Practice; Treatment Tech Shift Clinical Best Practices

By Monica E. Oss, Chief Executive Officer

There has been a long debate about the scope of health care practices. What type of licensed clinical professionals can perform particular functions? Should psychologists and/or pharmacists prescribe psychotropic medications? What supervision do nurse practitioners and physician assistants need? (Should ‘physician assistants’ be renamed ‘physician associates’?)

Psychologists can prescribe in five states: Louisiana, New Mexico, Illinois, Iowa, and Idaho (see Can Psychologists Prescribe Medications?). The scope of pharmacists’ practices is state-dependent and varies widely from state-to-state (see Mapping U.S. Statewide Protocols For Pharmacist Prescriptive Authority). Pharmacists may or may not give injections and immunizations and prescribe everything from naloxone, tobacco cession aids, travel medications, and more. Physician Assistants are licensed to practice in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, all US territories, and the uniformed services. Physician Assistants are authorized to prescribe medications in all jurisdictions where they are licensed, except Puerto Rico (see PA Prescribing and Assessing Scope of Practice in Health Care Delivery: Critical Questions in Assuring Public Access and Safety).

Executives of health and human service organizations need to plan to leverage the ‘value’ of their clinical team members by developing systems where they can work at the ‘top of their practice’—with most of their time going to the services that require their specific level of training. But that is easy to say and much harder to accomplish in practice. This type of service specialization is an essential part of the specialization needed to achieve maximum operational efficiency—and the highest value.

But there are two factors that complicate plans for specialization to increase value. The first is that in systems that are increasingly rewarded for a ‘whole person’ approach to care—which runs contrary to specialization. The second is that health care treatment technologies are reaching a level of sophistication that they can be a replacement for some of the work of licensed clinical professionals. The key for executive teams is using technology to address both of these issues. The first is ‘virtual integration’—creating a singular consumer data set that is available to all health care professionals. The second is to use data—both small data and big data—to develop algorithms that curate the recommendation of treatment services for specific consumers—both treatment technology and the most appropriate clinical professional. These are essentials to sustainability—building organizational efficiencies that result in competitive advantage.

For more on our coverage of efficiency and effectiveness in staffing models—and in emerging treatment technology, check out these resources in the OPEN MINDS Industry Library.

Scope of Practice Issues

Digital Treatment Trends & Strategy

Digital Treatment Developments

For more on managing and practicing at the top of your team’s skillsets, join me for The 2022 OPEN MIND Management Best Practices Institute in Newport Beach, California from August 30 to September 1, 2022.