We have reviewed the letter distributed today by AANP and appreciate their acknowledgment of the difficult legislative landscape of the Commonwealth of Virginia. We wanted to take an opportunity to clarify for our members a few points that were addressed.

First, it is important to note that a lot of states would value the opportunity to transition to practice without requirement for a practice agreement. Once the bill is passed and the attestation process is completed, more than 50 percent of our members will have the ability to practice without a collaborative agreement.

Regarding AANP’s mention of our current bill: it’s important to note that we are working from a new substitute bill that reduces the restrictive language that was initially introduced during the first House sub-committee meeting.

While the legislation does retain physician-led team language during the collaborative period and the joint regulatory oversight of the Boards of Medicine and Nursing, this was a trade-off we needed to make in order to achieve transition to practice language.

Please note that we are working on a question and answer document (FAQ) to clarify any and all potential questions and hope to have it completed within the next few days. We will follow up with an email when that is finished. This document will also be housed on CareforVA.com.

We appreciate all the questions and encouragement that we have received. As AANP noted, this is a difficult process and we are doing everything we can to ensure that legislation is in the best interest of all NPs in Virginia. This is why the VCNP executive committee, all regional presidents, and the regional government relations chairs held an emergency conference call last Wednesday to discuss our new substitute bill and to vote on if they wanted Del. Roxann Robinson to move forward. Nine members of the executive committee and 12 regional presidents all voted unanimously to move forward with the substitute.

We will continue to work on your behalf and keep you informed of any changes.