Health professionals mixed on nursing state licensure compact

Requirements that nurses be licensed in every state they want to work in are creating barriers to use of new forms of healthcare, including telemedicine, according to some industry professionals, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Six states have enacted legislation to adopt a licensure compact to allow nurses to practice telemedicine across states: Wyoming, Virginia, South Dakota, Idaho, Florida and Tennessee. Seven more have bills pending.

But not everyone is in support of such a compact, including many nurses themselves. Nurses' unions, WSJ finds, are against the compacts because disparate licensing standards from state to state could negatively impact patient care.

For example, Massachusetts has requirements that are greater than other states, David Schildmeier, a spokesman with the Massachusetts Nurses Association, a union and professional group, tells the paper.

Maureen Swick, senior vice president and chief nurse executive for Inova Health System in Virginia, however, refutes that claim.

"That's absolutely crazy," she tells the WSJ. "We all take the same test. The curriculum from nursing school is all the same."

The compact recently has been updated in an effort to gain more momentum, the report adds. It now requires that states conduct criminal background checks on licensed nurses, and would bar a nurse convicted of a felony from getting a multistate license.

It's not the only state licensure compact the industry has seen in the past year. The Federation of State Medical Board's Interstate Medical Licensure Compact became ready for formal implementation last May when Alabama was added to the roster of states supporting the legislation. Six more states introduced legislation on the compact in January.

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