After years of advocacy by Kaiser Permanente government relations and MAPMG physicians, the State of Maryland and the District of Columbia recently adopted new laws simplifying licensing requirements for physicians seeking to practice across state lines.
Currently, a MAPMG physician who wishes to practice in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia is required to go through the full licensing process, including primary source verification, in all three jurisdictions. This can take three months or more. The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact will streamline the process for physicians who already hold a license in a Compact state and have a clean record to obtain one in another Compact state, ideally in just a couple of weeks. The Compact is a major legislative priority for Permanente Medicine, and over the past several years many MAPMG physicians worked with their elected representatives and colleagues from professional organizations to advocate for its adoption in the KPMAS region.
“These legislative victories are important steps towards our goal of making the administrative requirements to practice medicine far more streamlined in our tri-jurisdictional KP Region,” says Bruce Wollman, MD, MAPMG Associate Medical Director for Government Relations, Healthcare Utilization, Pharmacy and Pathology/Laboratory Services.
The Compact also fits in well with MAPMG’s emphasis on telehealth, and our strong interest in centers of excellence.
Dr. David Hexter joined one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Delegate Ariana Kelly (D-Montgomery), and colleagues from the medical community (including Johns Hopkins and the Maryland Hospital Association) for the Maryland law’s signing by Governor Larry Hogan in Annapolis on May 5.
The KPMAS Government Relations team worked closely with MAPMG to make this happen. “This is a great success story that was made possible through the hard work and collaboration of our government relations team and MAPMG,” said Laurie Kuiper, Senior Director, Government Relations.
The new laws will take effect this year in DC on June 9 and in Maryland on July 1, 2019. As of March 2018, twenty-two states have enacted the compact including Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Additional information is available at licenseportability.org/state-status/
