Effective Oct, 5, 2007, Illinois law excised the supervisory language describing relationships between physicians and CNMs. Now the laws in only 6 states (California, Florida, Massachusetts, Nebraska, North Carolina and South Carolina) fail to meet the licensed independent practitioner (LIP) definition within The Joint Commission (formerly JCAHO) hospital accreditation standards.

The Governor signed into law S. 360, the omnibus bill reauthorizing and renaming the Nursing and Advanced Practice Act as the Nurse Practice Act and extending its sunset to 2018.

For advanced practice nurses, the improvements are substantial:

• Deleting “physician medical direction” of APNs, providing instead for “collaboration and consultation.”
  
  
• Dispensing with the need for APNs with privileges at a hospital or ambulatory surgical treatment center to have a written collaborative agreement with a physician. (Those without privileging documents would still need to have a written collaborative agreement.)