Healthcare Providers: Florida Legislature Expands Scope of Practice for Pharmacists and APRNs

On March 11, 2020, just two days before the end of the 2020 Florida Legislative Regular Session, the Legislature passed two bills which have special significance given the escalation of fear related to COVID-19 or Coronavirus disease. House Bill (“HB”) 389 expands the practice of pharmacists by allowing them to test and treat patients for certain chronic medical conditions and minor, uncomplicated acute medical conditions. HB 609 authorizes qualified advanced practice registered nurses (“APRNs”) to independently operate primary care practices without physician supervision.

Both bills were signed within hours of passage by Governor DeSantis, but the new laws will not take effect until July 1, 2020, which could be after the Coronavirus pandemic has hopefully lessened, but too late to respond to the immediate need for additional healthcare providers in those Florida counties which have declared a state of emergency due to Coronavirus. When the new laws go into effect this summer, Florida will join seventeen other states with expanded pharmacist practice, and twenty-one states and the District of Columbia with independent practice status for APRNs.

The new laws will have profound effects upon the delivery of healthcare in Florida, including some good, some bad, as well as the predictable and unpredictable. Looking specifically at senior living facilities, APRN expanded practice should have beneficial effects including the reduction in unnecessary hospitalization of long-term care patients. The hospitalization of elderly patients often causes irreversible decline in function and exposes them to hospital-acquired illnesses and delirium. An expanded practice APRN will allow for more timely diagnosis and medical treatment when a patient has a change of condition in the long-term care facility. The APRN can intervene and treat the patient in place at the facility, instead of transferring the patient to the hospital for assessment. Thus, expanded practice APRNs will play a valuable role in caring for the long-term care patient and reducing costly and unnecessary hospital admissions.

Florida’s new law requires that APRNs have at least 3,000 hours of experience and completion of graduate courses in pharmacology and differential diagnosis to be qualified to autonomously provide services in family medicine, general pediatrics, and/or general internal medicine. Likewise, the new law requires pharmacists to enter into collaborative agreements with physicians before the pharmacist is qualified to treat chronic conditions including asthma, arthritis, and obesity and also to test for and treat patients for minor, uncomplicated acute conditions including influenza, strep throat, lice, ringworm, and athlete’s foot. Accordingly, only subsets of Florida’s 20,175 licensed APRNs and 20,510 licensed pharmacists will benefit from the new law. It is likely that many of those APRNs and pharmacists that are otherwise qualified to expand their practices will decide not to do so because of factors including professional liability costs.

Proponents of the new legislation believe it will improve the timeliness and access to medical care by giving Floridians more options for treatment. For example, Floridians living in rural areas, where they are often underserved, will now have improved access to healthcare in their own communities. Proponents make good points because some experts estimate that by 2030 Florida will have a shortage of 4,671 primary care providers (“PCPs”) unless something is done. Those opposed argue that the new laws authorize pharmacists, which are generally not formally trained in medical diagnoses, to practice medicine. The opposition is also concerned that there will be a dangerous expansion in APRNs’ scope of practice where they will be challenged to properly diagnose and treat life-threatening conditions.

The Florida Medical Association, which represents physicians, opposes the new laws because they allow individuals without sufficient training to practice medicine. In contrast to that position many individual physicians are optimistic about expanded practice because they believe it will allow patients to obtain medical care from more and different sources which in turn will allow physicians to concentrate on the more serious and chronic medical conditions.