Support SB199

Please ask your Representative Vote ‘yes’ for SB199 and sign on as a co-sponsor of this bill.  Help us end this unnecessary step in providing quality healthcare to our patients. 

Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) should be allowed to practice at the highest level of their education and expertise, as the 2010 Institute of Medicine Report on the Future of Nursing recommends. In Illinois, APRNs have proven to provide safe and effective care since they were first licensed in 2001.

We have reached an agreement with the Illinois State Medical Society. SB 199 removes the requirement that an APRN with Full Practice Authority must have a consulting physician identified in the Illinois PMP when prescribing benzodiazepines. This change is needed because:

• Benzodiazepines are a schedule III medication that APRNs, especially Psych Mental Health Nurse Practitioners, had been prescribing without consultation before 2017. This has added an administrative barrier to their practice at a time when there is a shortage of mental health providers.
  
  
• Consultation is a monthly retrospective process and not the best practice. The best practice is assessing the patient’s access to controlled substances before prescribing using the Prescribing Monitoring Program.  This BEST PRACTICE allows the APRN to know the controlled substance history of their patient before prescribing, not retrospectively discussing it with a physician after the fact. Especially when, in most instances, the physician does not know, nor ever met, the patient.