Contact:
Megan Rowe
(434) 924-5679
meganrowe@virginia.edu

UVa Nurse Named to Attorney General's Healthcare Working Group

Charlottesville, Va., Sept. 13, 2006 - A University of Virginia nurse is one of several healthcare experts named to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell's new Healthcare Working Group.

Teresa Haller, MSN/MBA, RN, president of the Virginia Nurses Association, vice president of the Virginia Partnership for Nursing and nurse manager of Clinical Care Services at the UVa Health System, will evaluate healthcare regulations with 15 other healthcare and business leaders and state senators. The working group will dovetail its efforts with the attorney general's newly-formed Regulatory Reform Task Force.

"Nurses recognize that regulations are a double-edged sword," Haller said. "Unnecessary and burdensome regulations can create barriers for patients to access care, while other regulations provide a valuable protective function for patients and allow nurses to provide the level of care that patients need. The task force will take a deliberate approach to reviewing the health care regulations, and I am excited about the opportunity to serve on this working group with several esteemed colleagues."

According to the task force work plan from the attorney general's office, as the working group and task force evaluate regulations, it will consider each regulation's purpose, statutory authority, costs and monitoring. Regulations that do not pass these tests will be modified, eliminated or retained if circumstances require retaining it. The attorney general may request relief from regulations that are mandated by federal, not state, requirements.

The attorney general has also created working groups to focus on agriculture and small business regulations.

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