The Georgia Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would ease restrictions on advanced practice registered nurses.
The bill, SB 351, would allow such nurses to prescribe radiology tests like MRI’s and CAT scans, and remove the requirement that they only do so in emergencies.
The measure would also expand the number of APRN’s a doctor may supervise from four to eight.
The proposals are a faint shadow of what SB 351 originally proposed to do, when it was offered as a solution to address the lack of doctors in rural counties by giving APRN’s more authority to act on their own.
Doctors and others on the Senate Health and Human Services Committee opposed giving nurses many more powers, and also said it would create a two-tiered system where rural counties had less educated providers. The bill’s proponents said those counties often had no provider at all and an APRN would be better than nothing.
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