Iowa will no longer require experienced physician assistants — known as PAs — to be work under the direct supervision of doctor in order to practice medicine. PAs who are newly licensed, though, will have to have an agreement with a supervising doctor for two years before they may practice independently.
“This is a game changer for rural hospitals and it really makes a difference to be able to provide that access to Iowans who need it,” Governor Kim Reynolds said today after she signed the bill into law to make these change. “We want to make sure that we do everything we can to maintain health care in rural Iowa.”
Over half of the 1300 licensed PAs in Iowa today are working in rural communities. About 40% of the PAs who graduate in Iowa, though, leave to practice elsewhere.
“Allowing the PAs to operate independently I think will lead us to keeping more of our PAs here as we are the Harvard of the PAs,” Representative Josh Turek of Council Bluffs said when the bill was debated in the House.
The first class of PAs graduated from the University of Iowa in 1974. The PA program at Des Moines University has been operating nearly four decades. In the past decade, St. Ambrose University in Davenport and the University of Dubuque started PA training programs. The PA program at Northwestern College in Orange City started in 2020.