The nurse practitioner will see you now, eh?

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes and now a new nurse-practitioner-led clinic.

The state’s first nurse-led outpatient clinic since a recent change in state law opens April 6.

Family nurse practitioners will offer primary-care services in the downtown Minneapolis clinic, run by the University of Minnesota School of Nursing.

The facility is one of about 250 nurse-led clinics in the U.S. that operate without a physician’s oversight. It’s been a long political battle with doctors’ lobbies. But 20 states and the District of Columbia now permit nurse practitioners to practice without physician supervision. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts signed a bill last month to make his state the 20th.

The Minneapolis clinic will serve as a training facility for U-M nursing students, clinical pharmacists and other primary-care providers. Nearly 16,000 nurse practitioners graduate each year, but there aren’t enough facilities where they can gain clinical experience, experts say.

It’s expected that the expanded use of nurse practitioners will help address the nation’s shortage of primary-care providers.

Two-thirds of nurse-led clinics are affiliated with universities, and many serve the country’s most vulnerable patients.

“When you can connect an actual clinical service with the school of nursing, it means we’re actually training nurse practitioners, not only in the reality of this model, but also with an interprofessional team,” said Connie White Delaney, dean of the U-M School of Nursing.