Nurse Practitioners Say Proposed Bill Would Help OK's Primary Care Shortage

Studies show many Oklahomans aren't getting the healthcare they need because there aren't enough doctors to go around.

Nurse practitioners could help fill that gap, and a new state law would make that possible.

We all assume that if you're sick you go to a doctor, but there's only one doctor for every 1,300 patients in Oklahoma.

That's where nurse practitioners come in.

Nurse practitioner Kristi Sager sees patients of all ages. As owner of the Wellspring Family Clinic, she does everything a family doctor does - which is good, because family doctors are disappearing.

"Fewer medical students are choosing to go into family practice medicine; they're opting for higher-specialty options that make more money, in the end," she said.

Sager writes prescriptions and diagnoses patients on her own, but Oklahoma law still requires her to have a supervising physician.

That doctor does not work in the clinic, he's just on standby, but he's expensive.

Sager said, "It's very costly, it's expensive. What it means is, for me as a clinic owner, I cannot hire more nurse practitioners."

She said without the requirement, the clinic could stay open longer, hire more nurses, and, ultimately, see more patients.

Nurse practitioners like Stephanie Keesee could then afford to open their own clinics.

"There's no business plan where you can take 10, 20, 25 percent off the top to pay a physician, a supervising physician agreement," Keesee said.

House Bill 1013 would allow nurse practitioners to have full practicing authority in Oklahoma - meaning more people would get more primary care.

"If I treat the hypertension, and I treat the sore throats, and I do the well-baby checks and things like this, hopefully, we have less and less of the terrible sickness," Sager said.

The House will vote on the bill on Monday and then it will go to the Senate. Twenty other states already have similar laws in place.