Reduced levels of productivity and distraction aren’t the only personnel issues that can arise when nurse practitioners use their phones at work. Because smartphones are essentially handheld computers, the stored information is just as susceptible to being hacked as your laptop. This means that if you use your mobile device in your NP practice without precaution, a patient’s protected health information can be easily accessed and transmitted, quickly putting you in violation of HIPAA and your integrity at risk.

Do you really understand how you're paid? As nurse practitioners, many of us are paid based on productivity, essentially the revenue we bring in to our practice. Such compensation structures are based on the RVU, or relative value unit. Those of us paid on productivity compensation models have a basic understanding of how this system works. At the most basic level, Medicare and other payers reimburse medical providers for the services they provide based on a given numerical value assigned to each service type.