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The Rural Care Organizations Improvement Act Of 2015

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The Rural Accountable Care Organizations Improvement Act of 2015, introduced to the United States Senate in May and now being reviewed by the Senate Finance Committee, will amend part of the Social Security Act to try and improve the way the Medicare shared savings program assigns beneficiaries by basing the assignments on services of primary care offered by providers, including Nurse Practitioners (Govtrack.us, 2015). For Nurse Practitioners specifically, this new legislation will allow nurse practitioner patients to be assigned to Medicare shared savings Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) (AANP, 2015). Currently, the Affordable Care Act establishes nurse practitioners as providers whom are eligible providers in ACOs; however, the current Medicare Shared Savings program statute prevents beneficiaries of Medicare, who are receiving primary care service from a nurse practitioner, from being assigned to Accountable Care Organizations inside the program (AANP, 2015). The American Association of Nurse Practitioners (2015) also claim the exclusion of nurse practitioners must be repealed if ACOs want to develop further as models of practice, which improve cost effectiveness, patient access and quality. Since 2011, the representative for the 3rd Congressional District of Tennessee is Chuck Fleischmann of Ooltewah. Fleischmann, like most Republicans, is against Obama care altogether, having co-sponsored the Act to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in

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