National Nurses Week is upon us! Officially going from Saturday, May 6 to Friday, May 12, 2023, with the 2023 theme being “Nurses Make a Difference: Anytime, Anywhere – Always”. According to the American Nurses Association, there are currently over 4 million Registered Nurses in America. 

Primary Care Providers (PCP) are problem solvers trained to learn as much as they can about the entire human body. As soon as the patient begins to describe their concern, the PCP is processing the information and evaluating possible solutions or treatments. It is often difficult to determine how much time is needed for a visit because they are trained to not just look at a single problem, but the whole person. Value-based care and mandatory quality measures (or risk losing money) have made the primary care visit even more complex. If a provider runs late, patients become irritated and upset but expect the provider to give them the amount of time needed for whatever “oh by the ways” they mention even if it wasn’t included in the reason for visit.

Medicare Annual Wellness Visits (AWV) are frequently viewed by primary care providers as a tedious visit in which patients see little value. With consistent access to care issues and a shortage of primary care providers, these visits are easy to push to the side and focus on other visits. The problem is, these visits can impact attribution and they are also a key metric in value-based care plans as well as Accountable Care Organization (ACO) requirements to receive incentive payments. So how can a practice balance the need to maintain attribution and satisfy insurance requirements while still providing crucial hands-on care to patients? The answer may be more simple than hiring more providers or limiting new patients. Nurse-led Annual Wellness Visit programs have been proven to effectively meet the AWV requirements while increasing access to the provider for other visits.

It is no secret that healthcare has been in crisis — a staffing crisis. While the pandemic certainly exacerbated the situation, present workloads, emerging patterns contrary to traditional practice, and burnout are only the latest in a long line of factors straining the healthcare workforce.