Regulation
What is regulation and why is it important?
Most statutes direct a government agency to implement that provision in the law by promulgating rules and regulations and enforcing the statutes. For instance, the Board of Nurses Examiners for the state of Texas is the agency granted the authority to implement and enforce the Nurse Practice Act in Texas.
Unlike statutes that can only be changed by the Legislature, rules are revised on a continuous basis. Many rule changes are prompted by changes in statute, but Texas agencies are also required to review all of their rules every four years to ensure that the rules are current. Therefore most agencies, including the BNE, review their rules on a regular schedule.
Amendments to any rules must be published in the Texas Register. The public is given 30 days to submit comments on the rule amendments. After the 30-day comment period, agency staff reviews the comments, makes changes as it thinks appropriate. In the case of the BNE, those rules go back to the board for final adoption. The adopted rules are published in the Texas Register and then the rules are changed on the BNE’s Web Site.
The Texas Register is published every Friday, and CNAP monitors each issue for rules being proposed by a number of state agencies that might affect APNs and their patients. CNAP comments on all the rules that should be amended to include APNs. This is just one of several services that CNAP performs constantly to keep APNs moving forward, even when the Texas Legislature is not in session.
To help make it possible for CNAP to continue monitoring the Texas Register and offering all of the services that keep APNs moving forward, CNAP needs your continuing support. Please take the time to become a CNAP Partner now.
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