Care Coordination and Registered Nurses’ Essential Role
ANA Position Statement
Approved: 02/2021
Registered nurses routinely coordinate with members of patients’ health care teams every day in the course of delivering health care services to patients, whether in acute care, long-term care, private practice, or other settings. Patient-centered care coordination is a core professional standard for all registered nurses and is central to nurses’ longtime practice of providing holistic care to patients—incorporating interventions from a variety of disciplines into traditional health care approaches. For these reasons, the ANA supports the promotion and involvement of registered nurses in the development of future care coordination models. Specifically, the ANA believes that registered nurses must be:
- Recognized as essential to successful care coordination in the nation’s health care delivery system. This recognition must come from policymakers, health care professionals, and payers.
- Appropriately compensated for the services they provide to patients and families. There must be payment parity across all qualified health professionals for the scope of services they provide in delivering high-value care coordination.
- Included in the design and endorsement, and use of rigorously tested care coordination measures, which are central to the domain of nursing. The contributions of registered nurses performing care coordination services must be defined, measured, and reported to inform and ensure appropriate financial and systemic incentives for the professional care coordination role.
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