The American Association of Nurse Anesthesiology (AANA) congratulates Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on his confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services and stands ready to work with his Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on cutting costly, burdensome, and inefficient healthcare regulations and removing barriers to care for CRNA practice.
In a February 13 letter to Secretary Kennedy, AANA President Janet Setnor, MSN, CRNA, Col. (Ret), USAFR, NC, outlined how AANA and HHS can work together on removing barriers to efficient anesthesia care delivery by CRNAs.
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Setnor urged Secretary Kennedy to remove “onerous and unnecessary physician anesthesiologist supervision requirements” placed on CRNAs by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as part of the Medicare hospital and critical access hospital Conditions of Participation and ambulatory surgical center Conditions for Coverage. CMS allows states to opt-out of this requirement for CRNAs, but this process is onerous, and CRNAs are the only provider type to be required to go through this hurdle. HHS has the authority to make changes to the CMS requirements, and in the letter, Setnor requested that Secretary Kennedy permanently eliminate these supervision requirements along with the opt-out requirement.
Another high priority AANA shares with Secretary Kennedy is reducing Americans’ reliance on opioids as a primary pain management modality. CRNAs play an important role in mitigating the ongoing opioid crisis through their use of nonopioid treatments for anesthesia and for chronic, acute, and interventional pain management. This approach may reduce the reliance on opioids as a primary pain management modality and therefore aid in the reduction of potential adverse drug events related to opioids.
“CRNAs care about one thing above all else: the safety and quality of the anesthesia care that they provide for their patients,” Setnor wrote in the letter. “HHS has an opportunity to increase flexibility in the US healthcare system so that facilities can determine the anesthesia delivery model that best works for their operational needs. Given current and impending shortages of physician anesthesiologists, the US healthcare system must rely on autonomous CRNA practice to ensure that Americans are able to receive safe and high-quality anesthesia care.”
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CRNAs are anesthesia professionals who safely administer more than 58 million anesthetics to patients each year in the United States. CRNAs practice in every setting in which anesthesia is delivered: traditional hospital surgical suites and obstetrical delivery rooms; critical access hospitals; ambulatory surgical centers; ketamine clinics; the offices of dentists, podiatrists, ophthalmologists, plastic surgeons, and pain management specialists; and U.S. military, Public Health Services, and Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare facilities.
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Source – prnewswire
