Telemedicine Hampered By Licensure Delays

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

In some states, obtaining medical licenses is a time consuming process which keeping telemedicine services from crossing state lines.

“One of the major barriers to the practice of telemedicine is the state-to-state inconsistency and variability of requirements for physicians to obtain a medical license,” explain researchers in a CO3 study. According to these experts, the time consuming process of obtaining medical licenses in multiple states is holding back the growth of telemedicine over state lines.

Fierce Health IT reports it could take up to 12 hours from start to approval for a state medical license. Of respondents who submitted more than 100 applications in a year, 54 percent said it took more than 12 hours while another 17 percent said it took four to nine hours. Only 8.3 percent of respondents said they felt all states were "reasonable in processing the applications.”

Some states took much longer than others to obtain the license after submitting applications. According to iHealth Beat, “It took one to three months to obtain licenses in Indiana, Arizona, and Virginia, while it took at least 10 months in California, Illinois, and Texas.”

Researchers concluded, “The rapid growth of telemedicine is consistently meeting resistance because of the timely, costly, and variable process of medical license portability.”

According to the authors, medical license portability “continues to remain elusive for a solution that will allow for the exponential and timely growth of telemedicine. If there were ever a time for the mission of state medical licensure boards to rally in support of shaping the future of healthcare delivery by finding a solution for removing a most significant barrier to telemedicine, the time is now.”