April 8, 2020
On April 5, 2020, Texas Governor Greg Abbott temporarily waived certain regulations to allow more flexibility between physicians and the physician assistants (“PAs”) and advanced practice registered nurses (“APRNs”) they supervise for the duration of the Governor’s disaster declaration. Specifically, the waivers provide that:
- the limit of seven full-time PAs or APRNs delegated prescriptive authority by an individual physician has been suspended;
- any prescriptive delegation does not need to be in writing; and
- the PAs, APRNs and their delegating supervising physicians do not need to register the prescriptive delegation with the Texas Medical Board (“TMB”).
Supervising physicians and their PAs/APRNs remain responsible for meeting the standard of care for all delegated acts. If prescriptive delegation continues beyond the disaster declaration, the relationship between the physician and PA/APRN will be subject to the standard TMB requirements, including a written prescriptive authority agreement and registration with TMB. The TMB has released an FAQ in response to the Governor’s waivers which can be found
here
.
