ANA-Illinois Legislative Platform
Access to Quality Care
ANA-Illinois supports legislation that:
- Assures that essential health care services are available to all people of Illinois provided through a financing mechanism that promotes (1) universal access, (2) eliminates administrative waste, and (3) fosters public accountability.
- Advocates for health care clients’ rights to availability of information, choice of health care professional (including APRNs), monitored outcomes of care provided by health plans, protection mechanisms, advocacy, and access to information about the effects of acquisitions, mergers, and closures.
- Assures quality health, vision, and dental care to all persons especially historically marginalized populations.
- Expands and advocates for the development of alternative non-institutional health care services, including but not limited to telehealth, home and community nursing services.
- Improves direct access by health care clients to the services of nurses.
- Increases access to primary health care and advocates for parity of health insurance coverage regardless of race, ethnicity, gender expression, sexual orientation, immigration status and/or marital or civil union status
- Provides appropriate mental health services for all age groups.
- Support the provision of school nursing in all Pre-K thru 12 schools.
- Supports substance abuse education and treatment.
- Provides access to education and counseling on all options related to contraceptive care, family planning, and pregnancy.
- Provides adequate health care and physically safe environments for residents of correctional facilities.
- Efforts to maintain individual rights to seek redress for wrongdoings while controlling any exorbitant increase in the cost of professional liability insurance.
- Legislation that provides for quality state-of-the-art pain management, pain management education for healthcare professionals and consumers, alleviation of obstacles for providers of pain management, and the balancing of pain management therapies and access with the concerns of drug diversion.
Funding Nursing Education and Research
ANA-Illinois supports:
- Legislation that promotes public funding for nursing education and research to assure the delivery of and access to quality nursing care services that include strategies to improve recruitment of historically and systematically marginalized applicants.
- Legislation that supports accommodations for students who are pregnant, parents of young children, and other extenuating circumstances for flexibility during nursing education.
- Continued funding and activities of the National Center for Nursing Research.
- Continued funding and activities for the Illinois Nursing Workforce Center including mandatory workforce data collection during every nurse licensure renewal cycle.
- Continued funding in activities that support access to nursing education as outlined in the 2010 IOM Future of Nursing report.
- Increase funding to ensure that nurses are prepared to address social determinants of health and achieve health equity as outlined in the 2020-2030 Future of Nursing Report.
- Legislation that promotes innovative and quality nursing education in Illinois.
Funding Health Care
ANA-Illinois supports:
- Appropriations providing adequate health care for all populations.
- Legislation that reduces health care costs without compromising quality.
- Provisions for long-term care, including public and private funding for services of short duration and extended care if health care clients’ resources are exhausted.
- Support an equitable tax base and other methods which will provide adequate funding for needed social and health services and state agency oversight.
- Cost containment incentives in the healthcare delivery system that applies to all providers, all payers and vendors, and those which are based on the continued review of the appropriateness of health care services.
- Professional review of health care services with regard to the appropriateness and quality of services provided by all health professionals.
Advance the Profession of Nursing
ANA-Illinois supports:
- Regulations that safeguard the ability of registered nurses to practice within the parameters of the Nurse Practice Act.
- Legislation that provides registered nursing representation on health policy-making and advisory boards.
- Legislation and regulations that require optimal RN staffing that enhances the delivery of safe, quality care.
- Legislation that preserves and enhances the specialty role of registered nurses in advanced practice nursing and allows for full practice authority for APRNs.
- Legislation that enables nurses to function within their full scope of practice and education.
- Legislation that supports equitable provider reimbursement for advanced practice registered nurses.
- The responsibility of the State Board of Nursing to define and regulate the practice of nursing.
- Active opposition to legislation which would encroach upon professional nursing practice.
- Legislation that defines, recognizes and expands nursing and advanced practice nursing.
- Legislation requiring school health services to be coordinated and managed by certificated school nurses or advanced practice registered nurses.
- Active opposition to any attempt to hire or substitute non-nurses to practice professional nursing as defined by the Illinois Nurse Practice Act.
- Legislation that enacts the Nurse Licensure Compact.
- The right of nurses to be represented as a separate group of health care professionals.
- Legislation that secures direct reimbursement for nursing services.
- Legislation that promotes healthcare reimbursement for nurses and nursing services.
- Articulate, advocate and provide workforce advocacy solutions to equip nurses in shaping their work environment toward patient and nurse safety.
- Legislation that supports a culture of safety for the patient and nurse and a zero-tolerance for violence.
- Support regulations that require resources, including education and equipment for safe patient handling and workplace safety standards.
- Support measures that create a work environment where nurses are respected, valued, and included as decision-makers in the healthcare delivery system.
- Legislation that would provide rehabilitation and return to work of nurses impaired by drugs or alcohol.
- Opposition to mandatory continuing education tied to re-licensure for nurses when ANA-Illinois has been excluded from the stakeholder discussions.
Public Health
ANA-Illinois supports:
- Legislation that restores and strengthens the statewide public health infrastructure.
- Legislation protecting the public and health care providers from environmental and occupational health hazards.
- The development of standard operating procedures to identify and resolve toxic chemical contamination.
- Legislation to curtail impaired driving including alcohol, drugs, and distracted driving.
- Legislation that funds education and prevention techniques as the best methods for preventing threats of infectious disease transmission.
- Appropriations that provide adequate funding for all public health services including the provision of dental care and mental health services.
- Public health initiatives to reduce or eliminate violent crime.
- Legislation promoting firearms safety.
- A united effort against the health hazards of smoking including vaping, and/or use of electronic cigarettes.
Human Rights
ANA-Illinois supports:
- The basic right of all people of Illinois to equity under the law regardless of race, religion, creed, color, sex, age, physical disability, life-style, marital or civil union status, sexual orientation, gender expression and/or immigration status.
- Allowing patients to designate their own advance directives for health care.
- Information sharing with health care clients regarding alternative health care providers, options for diagnostic procedures, treatments and health care costs
- The rights of victims (child/person abuse or violent acts) for the provision of needed care at no cost to the victims.
- The right of individuals to make choices about their reproductive health in accord with their own beliefs.
- The availability of voluntary, anonymous HIV testing with informed consent and appropriate counseling by qualified health care professionals, and accessibility to anonymous testing and counseling about health practices by those seeking services at drug rehabilitation, sexually transmitted diseases, and family planning clinics.
- Legislation that opposes discrimination and assures the civil and human rights of persons inflicted with disease.
- The rights of all for access to quality pain management for acute, chronic and end of life pain to minimize suffering and improve quality of life, functionality, irrespective of diagnosis, age and culture.
Disaster and Pandemic Preparedness
ANA-Illinois supports:
- Legislation that assures the role of the nurse is adequately described and protected in any disaster and/or pandemic planning proposal.
- Legislation that includes disaster and pandemic preparedness in nursing school curricula.
- Legislation that promotes safety measures for nurses who participate in disaster recovery.
- Legislation to encourage appropriate funding for disaster and pandemic preparedness for nurses.
- Legislation that assures the appropriate funding for education of nurses in disaster and pandemic preparedness.
- State laws and regulations which protect nurses’ liability and immunity and insure nurse’s rights to choose to participate in a community response.