CMS Allows Nurse Practitioners & Physician Assistants to Sign for Home Health

For years, nurse practitioners (NP) and physician assistants (PA) have advocated for more autonomy. Congress fast-tracked that autonomy in section 3708 of the CARES Act by enabling NPs and PAs to order and certify patients for home health services in accordance with state laws. Mandated by the CARES act to define an effective date within 6 months of the bill's passing, CMS declared in May the official effective date to be March 1, 2020.

In response to this change, SutureHealth is proud to announce it has launched the industry-first enhanced workflow that enables NPs and PAs to seamlessly sign any document (not just home health) in a team-based approach with their collaborating physician(s). To enable the workflow, practice administrators need only turn on the setting, "Can Sign Documents", for nurse practitioners/physician assistants in the "My Team" section of the app.

The workflow is simple, flexible, and extremely intuitive. SutureHealth asked for feedback from it's user base and within 2 days had 150+ responses from physicians, clinic managers, nurse practitioners, home health agencies and hospice agencies. The feedback confirmed our approach and is another example of how our clinical understanding truly benefits our customers.

The change has been celebrated by the home health industry which often struggles to get the collaboration they need from physicians to run their business efficiently. NPs and PAs are often more engaged with post-acute companies like home health, and it seems that physicians have also welcomed the change insofar as it relieves their paperwork burden.

In the end, we were able to quickly adapt to these regulatory changes - enabling our customers to work as they want and maximize productivity.

Want to see it in action? Schedule a Demo

We hope you will try it out!

Michael Blackstone

Written by Michael Blackstone

Dr. Michael Blackstone is the co-founder and CEO of SutureHealth, which launched SutureSign, the leading electronic signature solution for healthcare, in 2012.