Radiologists and other physicians are expressing “serious concerns” with efforts to develop national practice standards for docs and other providers that supersede state scope-of-practice laws.
The nation’s largest healthcare delivery system recently initiated this process, hoping to help expand access to care amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But the American College of Radiology, American Society of Neuroradiology and others are “dismayed” that the Department of Veterans Affairs has operated opaquely in running the process.
In a Thursday letter to the VA’s leader, more than 100 physician groups including the ACR asked the massive health system to tread carefully in potentially expanding nonphysicians’ scope of practice.
“We are writing to express our serious concerns with the VA’s efforts to develop national standards of practice for physicians and other health professionals that supersede state scope of practice and licensure laws,” radiologists and other physicians wrote to Secretary Denis McDonough July 29. “The policies the VA is seeking to overhaul will have implications for standards of care beyond the VA,” the groups added later.
The previous presidential administration first released this interim rule in November, drawing ire from ACR a few months later. It proposes to allow Veterans Affairs clinicians to operate across state lines, regardless of local requirements, and asserts the 171-hospital system’s authority to establish national practice standards across VA facilities. The rule was merely meant to “confirm already-existing VA authorities,” the college said at the time. However, radiologists are concerned about a potential slippery slope leading the health system away from physician-guided care teams.
Veterans Affairs just recently started the process of developing the new standards of practice, as hinted in the original rule, according to those involved. The proposal would result in a national standard of practice for 48 categories of different health professionals. Radiologists and other physicians are also concerned that each category will be independent of one another, rather than emphasizing each professionals’ role in team-based care, according to the letter.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.