The shortage of nurse practitioners in the United States has broadly decreased access, decreased quality, and increased care costs. In some states, policymakers are trying to address such shortages by expanding nurse practitioners’ scope of practice or extending autonomy for nurses to order tests, prescribe medications, diagnose patients, and initiate and manage treatments. We exploit the state-level variations in the nurse practitioner’s scope of practice laws to estimate the impact on the mobility decisions of the nurse who serve Medicare beneficiaries. We identify nurse’s practice locations from 2013 to 2017 by gleaning their National Provider Identifiers from Part D Prescriber Public Use File data. We find that nurses in full-practice states are 0.41 percent less likely to move out of the state compared to nurses in restrictive-practice states. Also, nurses who move are 5.70 percent more likely to move to full-practice states than restrictive-practice states. Our estimates demonstrate nurses’ preference for practicing in states with the full scope of practice.

中文翻译：

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执业范围是否影响为医疗保险受益人服务的执业护士的流动性？

美国护士从业人员的短缺普遍减少了可及性、质量下降和护理成本增加。在一些州，政策制定者正试图通过扩大执业护士的执业范围或扩大护士在订购测试、开药、诊断患者以及启动和管理治疗方面的自主权来解决此类短缺问题。我们利用护士执业范围法律的州级差异来估计对为医疗保险受益人服务的护士的流动决策的影响。我们通过从 D 部分处方者公共使用文件数据中收集护士的国家提供者标识符来确定 2013 年至 2017 年护士的执业地点。我们发现，与限制性执业州的护士相比，全面执业州的护士搬出该州的可能性要低 0.41%。此外，与限制性执业状态相比，搬家的护士转向全面执业状态的可能性要高 5.70%。我们的估计表明护士更喜欢在具有完整实践范围的州执业。