In order to strengthen access to health care and in recognition of the advances in the delivery of health care, the member states of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact have allied in common purpose to develop a comprehensive process that complements the existing licensing and regulatory authority of state member boards and provides a streamlined process that allows physicians to become licensed in multiple states, thereby enhancing the portability of a medical license and ensuring the safety of patients. The compact creates another pathway for licensure and does not otherwise change a state’s existing medical practice act. The compact also adopts the prevailing standard for licensure and affirms that the practice of medicine occurs where the patient is located at the time of the physician-patient encounter and therefore requires the physician to be under the jurisdiction of the state member board where the patient is located. State member boards that participate in the compact retain the jurisdiction to impose an adverse action against a license to practice medicine in that state issued to a physician through the procedures in the compact. [PL 2017, c. 253, §7 (NEW).]

This compact is the Maine enactment of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact as revised by the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact Commission. The form, format and text of the compact have been changed minimally so as to conform to Maine statutory conventions. The changes are technical in nature and it is the intent of the Legislature that this Act be interpreted as substantively the same as the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact that is enacted by other member states. [PL 2017, c. 253, §7 (NEW).]