CAPNA: A New Development To Increase Quality in Primary Care

Abstract

An innovative primary care practice managed and staffed by Columbia University School of Nursing faculty opened at Columbia-Presbyterian Eastside in midtown Manhattan on September 29, 1997. The faculty's first commercial venture, Columbia Advanced Practice Nurse Associates (CAPNA), responded to the need to further validate cost, quality, and competence benefits of advanced practice nurses. The aim is to show these benefits exist for patients who are not in the underserved populations historically served by advanced practice nurses. CAPNA is the first faculty group practice in nursing contracted with managed care companies as primary care providers under the same reimbursement arrangements as physicians.