Page 38 - APP Collaboration - Assessing the Risk (Part One)

SVMIC Advanced Practice Provider Collaboration: Assessing the Risk

• The supervising physician shall be responsible for ensuring
compliance with the applicable standard of care.

• Within ten business days after the physician assistant
has examined a patient who falls into one of the following

categories, the supervising physician shall make a personal
review of the historical, physical, and therapeutic data

gathered by the physician assistant on that patient and
shall so certify in the patient’s chart within 30 days:

a) when medically indicated;

b) when requested by the patient;

c) when prescriptions written by the physician assistant

fall outside the protocols;

d) when prescriptions are written by a physician

assistant who possesses a temporary license; and

e) when a controlled drug has been prescribed.

• In any event, a supervising physician shall personally

review at least 20 percent of charts monitored or written by
the physician assistant every 30 days.

The court repeatedly emphasized the supervising physician’s
duty to supervise the physician assistant. It stated that the

physician assistant functions “only under the control and
responsibility” of the supervising physician and that Tenn. Code

Ann. § 63-19-106(b) directs that “[t]here shall, at all times, be
a physician who is answerable for the actions of the physician

assistant.” It went on to hold that the supervising physician
27

27 Id.

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