Panel Management for Nurse Practitioner Students

Population Health and Panel Management can be considered a part of quality and safety experiences that is often missing in routine Nurse Practitioner clinical training.  However, the Primary Care Medical Home Model supports these skills as essential for the primary care provider of the 21^st century.  Several studies have demonstrated the value of panel management for patient care outcomes.  Our Primary Care education grant initiated a 1 day clinical and ½ day of panel management clinical training for NP students from the School of Nursing.  The students are assigned individual panels of patients for the clinical duration of 6 months.  Weekly meetings with an NP faculty and RN case manager are a part of the panel management learning process.  An electronic registry is used to sort for patients not falling within preventive care or chronic disease performance measures.   The NP students (N=3)are encouraged to call the patient for telephone management, arrange an NP student appointment or, if limited slots are available, schedule the patients with other available clinic resources such as the RN Case Manager or a shared medical appointment. Results of the A1c, Blood Pressure and LDL measurements were evaluated by paired t-test to assess the panel management interventions over six months.  Results indicate that A1c mean (N=25 with pre/post values) before the assignment to the panel was 9.49 and 8.36 after the 6 month period (p=0.029).  Systolic blood pressures > 150 (N=32) pre mean value of 168.63 and post value of 140.84 showed statistically significant reduction at (p<0.001).  LDL > 100 (N=40) did not show a significant reduction of the mean pre value of 120.30 and post value of 111.10 (p=0.090).  Given that the NP students are here for only six months with a 1 day clinical experience plus ½ day of panel management per week, these results show a robust return on investment for the outcomes of NP student panel management.