As a professional who lives in a remote, rural area of Oklahoma, the topic of licensure portability is important to me for two reasons. The more personal of the two has to do with tele-behavioral health services. The community I served through a small Federally Qualified Healthcare Center was full of resilient, hard-working citizens – many of whom had to drive an hour
or more to their place of employment each day. Because of their work hours and daily commutes, many tried to schedule tele-behavioral health services three weeks out of the month, and use leave one-half day monthly to attend in-person visits. Unfortunately, the largest major metropolitan area was in Arkansas, across the Oklahoma border and out of reach of my license.
I decided to calculate what the U.S. land mass would be for 60 miles on each side of adjoining state borders. Surprisingly, excluding Alaska and Hawaii and not calculating the Canadian or Mexican borders, a full 1.5 million square miles are included in that scenario. Thinking through issues related to smaller states and other cross-border examples, I can see why portability of licensure is not only important for me providing services in rural Oklahoma, but for professionals and service recipients across the U.S.
The more “mission minded” reason has to do with being a lifetime educator and current faculty member who advises marriage and family therapy graduate students. Can you imagine how confusing this particular topic is for new students and new professionals to absorb? And, with states changing or updating rules on a continual basis, the work could be never-ending in terms of getting an “exact answer” to what is needed when taking a position in a state other than where they became licensed.
I’ve sat through multiple advising sessions and I always believed the dialogue about professional, academic and personal goals was of the highest value to students. And yet, the details, websites, and spreadsheets of comparative courses and licensure requirements state by state always seems to monopolize our time and energies.
For the sake of our current and future professionals, for those we serve, and for the provision of services in cross-border situations, my hope is for licensure portability to be achieved in all 50 states as quickly as possible!
Dr. Roberts is a policy analyst at the Healthy Minds Policy Initiative, a think tank to improve mental health services in Oklahoma. She is also a licensed marriage and family therapist, an AAMFT supervisor, and an adjunct professor for the Oklahoma Christian University marriage and family therapy training program.
