Safety and Health Magazine: Bill that would let nurse practitioners and PAs treat injured federal workers advances

The House Education and Workforce Committee has passed bipartisan legislation aimed at expanding access to treatment and improving wait times for federal workers who are injured on the job.

Approved with a unanimous voice vote on June 25, the Improving Access to Workers’ Compensation for Injured Federal Workers Act (H.R. 3170) would amend the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act of 1916 to allow physician assistants and nurse practitioners to treat injured federal workers. The bill now moves to the full House.

The House passed a similar bill in June 2022, but the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee didn’t act on it. The committee approved its own version of the bill in the next Congress, the 118th, but the full Senate never brought it to a vote.

In total, the House and Senate have made at least nine attempts to allow federal workers to receive injury treatment from nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

Those health care providers would “practice under the existing parameters of their state licenses,” Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT), the bill’s co-sponsor, said during the June 25 markup. He added that the bill would align the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act with other federal government health programs, including the Veterans Benefits Administration and Medicare.

“Across the country, nurse practitioners and physician assistants have become linchpins in providing access to timely health care,” said Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the bill’s sponsor and chair of the Education and Workforce Committee. “This is especially true in rural communities where an approved physician might not be within a reasonable distance. It’s also true in more urban areas where there can be long waiting times to see a physician and delay [workers’] time to recover.

“Our bill fixes an outdated requirement by allowing NPs and PAs to care for injured federal employees under FECA, so long as that care is within their scope of practice under state law.”

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), ranking member of the committee, acknowledged the bill as “an important step to modernize federal workers’ compensation” but said it “comes at a time when the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the Department of Labor have shut down injured federal workers’ ability to have their hearings when their services and benefits are denied.

“But this bill is definitely a step in the right direction.”