CARY, N.C. — During her lunch break, Schquthia Peacock has her eye on the General Assembly.

Peacock is a family nurse practitioner and co-owner of Preston Medical Associates.

What You Need To Know

  • If North Carolina expands Medicaid, there will be more patients with the same amount of health care providers

  • The SAVE Act would change state regulations, giving advanced practice registered nurses full-practice authority

  • It has not passed in previous legislative sessions

A legislative committee is studying how Medicaid expansion would affect the state, and this week it has heard about changing regulations around advanced practice registered nurses.

“As a nurse practitioner, and as I said, I can diagnose and treat,” Peacock said. “I can order lab tests, order diagnostic tests. I can write prescriptions, narcotic and noncontrolled substances.”

Even though she and other NPs can do all those things, there are regulations around their practices.

Nurse practitioners need a consulting physician at their practices. Peacock says many times practices have to contract out.

She’s lucky, she says — she co-owns her practice with a physician.

“I talk to plenty of nurse practitioners that are having issues of maintaining a supervising physician. Some have decided to leave the field because of the pandemic, and then they have to find another supervising physician,” Peacock said.

The SAVE Act is legislation that did not pass in previous legislative sessions. It would give advanced practice registered nurses full-practice authority.

Not everyone in the health care field agrees with this approach.

The nonprofit Physicians for Patient Protection says it would endanger patients.

Peacock disagrees. She says these nurses have the experience, and it would help keep health care options in rural areas.

“Many of my colleagues are debating on whether they’re going to stay in the state. Many of them can travel to just up the road, just up 95 to Maryland where there’s no obstacle to providing care,” Peacock said.

The committee still has more hearings and meetings, but Peacock believes if they’re serious about expanding Medicaid, changing the regulations would benefit the state and patients.

“If we’re expanding Medicaid, and we may bring more people into the health care system, you know access to care is going to be even more compromised than it already is,” Peacock said. “We’re going to need all people on the ground, all boots on the ground I say, to make sure that we’re addressing health care needs.”