By Fred Nathan, Executive Director, Think New Mexico
When the legislature convenes for a special session starting October 1, they should enact a straightforward reform that will immediately increase access to health care providers in New Mexico: join all the interstate compacts for health care workers.
These interstate compacts are agreements among states to recognize professional licenses issued by the other states participating in the compact. So, for example, a doctor licensed in Colorado could provide their license information to the New Mexico Medical Board and quickly become licensed to practice here as well.
New Mexico's failure to join the compacts means that doctors from other states cannot legally care for New Mexico patients – even via telehealth – without going through our state's licensure process. As a result, New Mexicans who desperately need access to care are forced to wait months for an appointment or travel out of state to find a doctor.
Forty-three states and D.C. participate in the interstate compact for physicians, including all five states that border New Mexico. A growing majority of states also participate in compacts for psychologists, counselors, physical therapists, audiologists and speech therapists, physician assistants, dentists, and emergency medical personnel – all fields where New Mexico has shortages.
States that join the doctor compact experience a 10-15% increase in the number of doctors licensed in their state, based on data from the New Mexico Medical Board.
Considering New Mexico's urgent and worsening doctor shortage, it is unconscionable that our state remains one of just four states that participates in one or no compacts. Meanwhile Colorado has joined all ten compacts; Utah is in nine; Oklahoma is in eight; Arizona is in seven; and even Texas is in five.
Since 2003, New Mexico has been one of 40 states in the Nurse Licensure Compact. As many as 80% of the nurses at some New Mexico hospitals, particularly in rural and border areas, would not be practicing here if New Mexico was not in this compact.
Passing the interstate compacts during the special session could be worth millions of dollars to New Mexico's rural hospitals. The U.S. Health and Human Service department just released information about how it will allocate $50 billion in federal funding that has been set aside to support rural hospitals.
State applications for this one-time funding will be evaluated based on several factors – including whether the state participates in the compacts for physicians, physician assistants, emergency medical personnel, nurses, and psychologists. The application deadline is early November, meaning New Mexico could lose out on this funding if lawmakers do not act on the compacts during the special session.
Interstate compacts are ideal bills to pass during a short special session because they simply require an up or down vote. The language cannot be materially changed because the compacts are agreements among states, and each state must agree to the same language in order to participate, similar to signing a contract. This minimizes the amount of time that lawmakers need to spend debating them.
Moreover, the House already unanimously passed seven of the compacts during the regular legislative session earlier this year. In addition, Governor Lujan Grisham told the Albuquerque Journal that she would like to include the compacts on the special session agenda.
That leaves the Senate. During the 2025 regular session, the Senate Judiciary Committee killed six of the seven compact bills without a hearing, and killed the doctor compact by making 32 amendments. The senators who oppose the compacts are trial lawyers, and their only material objection is that the compacts would not allow trial lawyers to sue the interstate commissions that oversee the compacts for their official acts. (The state board that licenses doctors has the same protection under New Mexico law.)
The good news is that the New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association now says that it does not oppose the compacts, meaning that there would be no interest group lobbying against them.
Meanwhile support for the compacts is broad and deep, ranging from AARP-NM to the Department of Defense to Patients Primero to medical providers themselves. Both Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains and the Conference of Catholic Bishops have endorsed the doctor compact because both are struggling to staff their health care clinics.
New Mexicans should not have to wait any longer for this commonsense reform to increase access to health care and maximize New Mexico's chances of receiving urgently needed funding for our rural hospitals. Please visit www.thinknewmexico.org to contact your elected officials and urge them to pass all of the interstate compacts for health care workers during this year's special session.
