By Kristina Fisher, Associate Director, Think New Mexico

Nearly every New Mexican has experienced the harmful effects of our state's worsening health care worker shortage, from struggling to find a doctor to waiting months for urgently needed care.

The good news is that state lawmakers have an opportunity to take one simple step that would immediately improve access to health care: joining the majority of other states that participate in interstate compacts for doctors and other health care workers. There are 10 major compacts for health care workers, yet New Mexico only participates in one of them, for nurses.

In brief, these interstate compacts are agreements among states to recognize and accept 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.

Without these agreements, doctors from other states cannot legally care for New Mexico patients – even via telehealth – without going through our state's burdensome licensure process.

Forty states and D.C. participate in the interstate compact for physicians, including all five states that border New Mexico. Thirty-one or more states also participate in interstate compacts for psychologists, counselors, physical therapists, audiologists and speech therapists, and emergency medical personnel. (The two newest compacts, for physician assistants and dentists, were launched in 2022 and 2023 and are rapidly gaining members.) States keep signing onto these compacts and none have left them, a strong show of confidence in the benefits they provide to patients in these states.

The fact that New Mexico does not participate in any of these nine major compacts puts our state at a serious competitive disadvantage in attracting doctors and other health care workers. Our neighboring states provide a stark contrast: Colorado has joined all ten compacts; Utah is in nine; Oklahoma is in eight; Arizona is in six; and even Texas is in five (and their legislature is currently considering legislation to join four more).

The one compact New Mexico has joined provides a great example of how these compacts can increase access to care. Since 2003, New Mexico has been one of 40 states in the Nurse Licensure Compact, which grants nurses a multistate privilege to practice in other compact states. As many as 80% of the nurses at some New Mexico hospitals, particularly in rural and border areas of the state, would not be practicing here if we were not in this compact.

So why hasn't New Mexico joined the compacts for doctors and other health care workers?

The main reason is that the powerful New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association has consistently opposed the compacts. They dislike a provision in the compacts that prevents lawyers from suing the interstate compact commissions. These commissions are boards that oversee the implementation of each compact, made up of members appointed by all the participating states. There is no good reason to sue them, but the lawyers object on principle to a rule shielding anyone from potential lawsuits.

Fortunately, during the current legislative session, a team of 10 legislators from both parties and both chambers of the legislature have introduced bills to bring New Mexico into the other nine major interstate compacts for health care workers. Passing these bills is the single most important step that lawmakers can take right now to begin alleviating the state's health care worker shortage.

We urge all New Mexicans to join us in urging their legislators and the governor to make joining the interstate health care worker compacts a top priority of the 2025 legislative session. V