Mr. Michael Menchaca is a Board Certified Nurse Practitioner raised in the Rio Grande Valley, originally born in Harlingen, Texas. He is preceded in business throughout the Harlingen community by his father, Manuel Menchaca, who has had business dealings in the automobile and real estate industry for over twenty years!
Mr. Menchaca first started his education at the University of Texas at Pan American where he received his Bachelors of Nursing. He then continued his education at one of the most prestigious and oldest Jesuit universities in the country that is Georgetown University. At both universities, Mr. Menchaca was an honor student and inducted into the international honor society. He has continued to practice in the Rio Grande Valley primarily serving in internal medicine and family medicine. He has also provided care in the pediatric icu and emergency room of different hospitals throughout the RGV.
As stated by the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP 2016), nurse practitioners (NP’s) are licensed, autonomous clinicians focusing on preventing and managing disease. NPs often specialize by patient population such as pediatrics, family medicine, or women’s health but may also specialize in dermatology, cardiology, etc.
The role of nurse practitioner was originally created in 1965 and since then has been growing to become a central and important role within the healthcare paradigm. NPs are becoming so important that the AANP’s Quality of NP Practice article has shown that patients under NP’s have higher satisfaction rates, less ER visits, less hospital admissions, and fewer hospital readmissions compared to doctors.
Almost twenty years ago, the Journal of the American Medical Association (2000) published their article comparing physicians to nurse practitioners. The results showed that quality of care between physicians and nurse practitioners were equal in the primary care setting.