James HolbrooksOn January 9, 2014, a bipartisan group of sixteen senators sent a letter to the Federation of State Medical Boards commending it for “advancing solutions toward multistate practice through more efficient sharing of medical licensure information.” Sounds hot, I know. Stick with me.
The letter was in response to the FSMB’s continuing efforts to overcome issues facing the concept of telemedicine. As the name implies, telemedicine is the practice of providing medical care at a distance. This encompasses everything from a simple phone consultation to something as complex as remote surgery via robotics, often referred to as telesurgery.
Specifically, the senators were addressing a piece of model legislation being drafted by the FSMB that would come to be known as the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact. Purportedly, the compact is designed to streamline the process of licensing physicians who seek to practice in multiple states. As it stands, this can be tricky. Each state has its own certifications a physician must hold to be legally allowed to practice there. So in theory, a doctor providing telemedical care across state lines—say, a routine checkup via Skype—could potentially be violating state law if the requisite licenses weren’t in order.
So far so good, yeah? Here we have a problem, specific to our modern age, being taken on through a concerted, common sense measure. I mean, you’d have to be nuts to see the compact as anything other than the honest attempt at facilitation is so clearly is, right? Well, as it happens, there are still a few nuts out there.
