Nurse Practitioners, Handmaidens No More

After years of working with a neurosurgeon and a heart surgeon, nurse practitioner Kathy Kenny opened her own medical practice last year in Chandler, Ariz., where she provides some of the same screenings and treatments that doctors do. Kenny is among 148,000 nurse practitioners who will have to pick up the slack beginning in 2014, if the Supreme Court allows President Barack Obama’s health-care law to add at least 30 million people to U.S. hospital, clinic, and doctors’ practices already suffering a shortage of physicians.

The nurses will likely see more referrals from local emergency rooms—mostly patients requiring follow-up care—as well as those with chronic conditions that need monitoring and those seeking treatment for the minor bumps, bruises, and sniffles of everyday life. “It’s controversial because some physicians feel that’s taking over their role,” says Kenny, who cares for patients with heart disease and diabetes at her Transition Clinic. “I’m not qualified for extremely complicated cases, but there’s going to be this influx of patients that need to go somewhere.”