This is a bit of an HTN first as we don’t usually break fundraising news, but with the tailwinds from the Rural Health Transformation Program on nurse practitioner scope of practice expansion and the increasingly desperate provider shortage problem, I’m trying to weave together the fundraising announcement with some policy commentary.
Video Interview
Special Announcement: Prax Health announces nearly $10 million in financing to help NPs open up independent practices
Prax Health, a platform that helps nurse practitioners start, run, and grow independent practices, announced their fundraising of nearly $10 million over two rounds from Floodgate, Refract Ventures, Canaan, and Meridian Street VC.
Since their launch in late 2024, Co-founder and CEO Meghan Jewitt shared that they’ve “helped over 200 nurse practitioners launch independent practices and are pacing for 5x-10x growth YoY this year.” For context, there are about 383k NPs, nurse midwives, and nurse anesthetists according to the BLS, many of whom are employed by hospitals or medical groups.
A few months ago, Meghan helped me better understand the patchwork nature of scope of practice laws and collaborative practice agreements for nurse practitioners across the United States.
Nurse practitioners already comprise 47% of the primary care workforce in this country, and the BLS anticipates NPs to be the fastest-growing profession in healthcare. As we discussed in the interview below, the American Medical Association is skeptical of expanded scope of practice for NPs, calling it “scope creep” and lobbying against it aggressively, and there’s still a preference for physicians in some parts of the country.
But as we continue to march headlong into an alarming provider shortage, increasing scope of practice and reducing collaborative practice agreement requirements for nurse practitioners seem like the path of least resistance from a labor supply perspective since residency slots are capped.
Setting aside the policy questions, there’s also just very little in the way of infrastructure for nurse practitioners who want to build out their own practices, which isn’t a problem that can be solved in D.C. or state capitols. Without that infrastructure, there’s a risk that we won’t really unlock the potential of nurse practitioners as a solution to the provider shortage crisis we’re staring down.