A7948 Summary

• Enacts three interstate compacts to allow licensed physical therapists, occupational therapists, audiologists, and speech-language pathologists to practice across member states under a "compact privilege" without obtaining separate licenses in each state.

• Establishes national administrative commissions for each profession to oversee licensure recognition, maintain databases of licensure and disciplinary information, and promulgate uniform rules binding on all member states.

• Requires participating states to implement criminal background checks, use national examinations, maintain continuing competence requirements, and participate fully in the commission's data system.

• Grants remote states authority to take disciplinary action against practitioners' compact privileges while reserving exclusive power to discipline home state licenses to the home state; allows home states to consider disciplinary findings from other states.

• Becomes effective when enacted into law in the tenth member state for each compact; states may withdraw with six months' notice and remain subject to reporting requirements through the withdrawal effective date.