A bill in the U.S. Senate would fill a gap in the Sunshine Act —a section of the Affordable Care Act that orders drug and medical-device makers to inform the government when they give stuff to physicians. The bill would extend this reporting mandate to cover physician assistants, nurse practitioners and other kinds of advanced practice registered nurses.
After all, many of them can prescribe the products above and they, like physicians, may receive cash and in-kind payments from the medical-products industry as incentives to do so.
As states give PAs and NPs more prescribing authority and as they take over more of primary care, it seems past time to fix that gap.
