Is national licensing an alternative to licensure compacts?
The Interstate Medical Licensure
Compact was formed in 2013 to help doctors and health systems expand their telehealth networks across state lines. It currently has 17 states signed on, with another 9 considering it, but it isn’t without its detractors.
Shirley Svorny, a California State University-Northridge professor of economics and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, believes that a better solution would be legislation passed by Congress that allows physicians to treat patients in all 50 states with a single license for whichever state they practice in. In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Ms Svorny posits that this plan “would greatly expand access to quality medical care by freeing millions of patients to seek services from specialists around the country without the immense travel costs involved.”