The Case for National Medical Licensure
The time is now.
Medical Licenses don’t work like driver’s licenses. A driver’s license in one state lets you drive into other states. If I drive from New York to Connecticut, I don’t need to apply for a Connecticut license to finish my drive to see my mom. If I were, for some reason, in the car with a patient, my ability to provide appropriately regulated medical care would stop as soon as we crossed that border. I can’t follow up with patients who came to see me in a state where I am licensed once they go to another state where I’m not. This is…dumb. We have to pay for licenses on a state-by-state basis, and they cost money—hundreds of dollars, different standards of maintaining that licensure, and overlapping medical boards. It’s expensive to be a broadly accessible doctor—especially a sub-specialist like myself.
This is not in the interest of patients. Why should your choice of physician—particularly in less populated states—be …