Physician assistants must be licensed in any state where they practice medicine. If you’ve ever applied for a state license, you know the process can be long and tedious, taking weeks or even months.
A compact license is basically a way to avoid having to apply for multiple state licenses in order to practice in more than one state.
Think about it like applying to PA school. Most PA students used the CASPA application instead of filling out an application for every individual program they applied to. While applicants applying to multiple programs must meet individual program requirements, the process is streamlined into one central application. This makes sense because most programs are asking for the same information.
This makes sense for state licensure applications as well. Most states ask for the same information when granting a license, so why not have one unified application each state can use? Instead of taking weeks to get a license in a new state it may only take days.
This is a huge benefit for healthcare practitioners as things like telemedicine and locums work are growing exponentially.
A provider must have a license in the state where their patient is located. For example, I practice on a border state. While I live and practice in Indiana, I have a lot of patients who live in Kentucky and Illinois. But I can’t see them for telehealth visits unless they are physically in Indiana or I have a license where they are located at the time of their visit.
If you plan to work in telehealth, border states, or travel and locum jobs, this is going to be a game changer.
The PA Compact is not operational yet, but it is available for state legislative enactment. Currently AAPA is working to encourage states to join and more than a dozen have done so.
It’s estimated to take about 2 years for the compact to become operational.
Those just starting PA school will hopefully benefit from this advancement by the time they graduate.
You can follow updates on the PA licensure compact here.
