- American medical graduates are those physicians who completed medical school in the U.S., U.S. territories or Canada. International medical graduates are physicians who have graduated from medical schools in any other location.
- In general, the following are the minimum documents that must be in a physician’s license file prior to obtaining licensure: application and fee, license verifications, medical school and postgraduate training verifications, initial license exam transcripts, work history verification and AMA/AOA profiles. Some licensing boards require a significantly larger number of verifications in their licensure process.
- Many licensing boards offer locum tenens or temporary licenses which have specific requirements which must be met. Some of the requirements include a letter of need from the location of work, minimum number of hours worked, limited disciplinary action or malpractice cases, etc.
- If a physician took a state licensing exam after 1972, they will need to contact the licensing board in the state they are seeking licensure to ensure they would meet that state’s licensing requirements.
- Some licensing boards still require a Jurisprudence exam as part of their license process. This exam is not deemed a state licensing exam.
- The following licensing boards may require a physician to take the SPEX (special purpose exam) in order to be eligible for licensure in their state: Alabama, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas. Several of these licensing boards have processes by which the SPEX requirement may be waived.
- While some licensing boards require the licensing file be sent to a board meeting for issuance, all licensing boards reserve the right to require a file be sent to a board meeting before a license can be issued.
- Currently, seven licensing boards have mandatory in-person interviews with the physicians as part of the licensing process. All states have the right to require a physician to appear for an in-person interview before issuing a license. Some of these licensing boards require physicians to bring their original medical training documents to the interview.
- CompHealth is deemed a third party by the licensing boards and because of that, some licensing boards will not provide us status updates on a physician’s file. In these cases, the physicians would have to obtain status update information and pass that on to us to help with the processing of the license file.
- A majority of the licensing boards require fingerprint cards/background checks and each individual licensing board has their own requirements for this process.
- Federation Credentials Verification Service (FCVS), an agency which obtains and stores primary sourced verification of a physician’s medical training, initial exam scores and ECFMG verification, is required in several states and is accepted in almost all licensing boards.
- Many states require a state controlled substance permit in addition to the medical license to practice in their state. In most cases, the controlled substance permit application can’t be applied for until after the medical license is issued.
- Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Certificate needs to be tied to the state(s) of physician practice. Though the DEA is a federal agency, each state has their own DEA office and process. It is possible for a physician to have numerous DEA certificates tied to the various states they practice in.
Licensing Hints and Tips
October 22nd, 2011 3 Min readTo simplify the licensing process for you, experts from CompHealth have put together these easy to follow hints and tips. If you would like more specific information on the licensure process, please contact the CompHealth licensing department at 800.328.3065.
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