As the university hashes out a proposal to place urgent care centers in dorms as soon as next year, officials are weighing the possibility of foregoing staff doctors in favor of the cheaper services of nurse practitioners.
But despite the difference in qualifications, officials said using nurse practitioners would not affect the level of care students receive.
Officials are discussing incorporating health services in some campus dorms in light of the possible move of Olin Health Center services to the Clinical Center on Service Road.
“Nurse practitioners have independent prescriptive authority in the state of Michigan and that means they can see patients without a physician overseeing them,” Director of Olin Glynda Moorer said. “(They) are fully trained to diagnose several illnesses and diseases.”
According to the MSU Health Team Web site, nurse practitioners must complete a four-year bachelor’s degree in nursing and three years of education and clinical training with a nurse practitioner focus, among other requirements.
Family physicians must complete a bachelor’s degree, plus four years of medical school and three years of residency training, in addition to other requirements such as licensing examinations, according to the Web site.
Moorer and Senior Associate Provost June Youatt said staffing for what could be urgent care centers still is under discussion and no decisions have been finalized.
“The scope of who would actually manage it, what kinds of services … that’s still in conversation,” Youatt said.
Moorer said hiring nurse practitioners instead of doctors would save the university an unspecified amount of money, which is a reason officials are considering it.
James Hillard, associate provost for human health affairs, said the centers also would give students a closer option if health services are moved to Service Road.
“If we move everything to the Clinical Center, just to maintain access it would be more important to have urgent care available closer to where people live,” he said.
Nurse practitioners are trained to see some, but not all cases handled by doctors, Moorer said.
“Nurse practitioners are trained to see several patients with minor illnesses … doctors can see more complex cases,” she said.
If a student needed to see a doctor, the nurse practitioner could make referrals to physicians, Moorer said.
“A nurse practitioner would see them first and then assess if they needed to see a physician,” she said.
The Brody Complex might be the first to hold the urgent care centers, Hillard said. He described using nurse practitioners in the urgent care centers as “the wave of the future.”
“A lot of the things that are currently done by physicians can be done better by nurses,” he said.
Officials hope to keep the centers free to students and cover costs with student health fees. Hillard said wait times should not be a problem.
“Conceptually, you could give people a beeper, they could go back to their room and when they’re ready to be seen, they can get paged and come down,” he said. “People lined up in the hall waiting to be seen isn’t an attractive proposition.”
Provost Kim Wilcox said although spreading services across campus might not be cost-efficient, it could improve access for students.
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“If we could find a way to move a bunch of them around at the same time and make them more accessible to students even if we didn’t save any money, let’s take a look at that,” he said.
