About Us

What This Site Is For

The U.S. medical regulation system is fragmented across more than 70 state and territorial medical boards. Most states have a single board governing both MDs (allopathic physicians) and DOs (osteopathic physicians); others — California, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia — operate separate boards for osteopathic physicians. New York is unique: physician licensing is handled by the State Education Department’s Office of the Professions, not by a standalone “medical board.” Each state board runs its own license-verification portal, complaint intake, disciplinary-action database, and renewal system.

If you’re trying to verify a physician’s license before booking a procedure, file a complaint about substandard care, look up a disciplinary action, request a copy of a board investigation file, or understand how out-of-state telemedicine licensure works — the right tool depends on the state, the licensee type (MD, DO, PA, NP), and whether the issue is regulatory (board), criminal (police/AG), civil (state court for malpractice), or administrative (hospital privileging, insurer panel).

state-medical-board.org/ is the practical reference. Every state page lists the verified board URL, license-lookup link, complaint-filing portal, disciplinary-action database, mailing address, main phone number, and the right escalation chain — all manually verified against the agency's own page and cross-referenced against the Federation of State Medical Boards.

We are completely independent. We are not affiliated with the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), DocInfo.org, the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Osteopathic Association (AOA), the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG), the National Board of Osteopathic Medical Examiners (NBOME), the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA), the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact Commission (IMLC), or any state medical board. The verified information lives at the agency itself; we point you to it.

The Six Kinds of Medical-Regulation Body You’ll Encounter

What You’ll Find on Each State Page

• State board name and URL — official .gov or .org board domain, with verified main phone and mailing address
• License verification portal — direct link to the board’s online license lookup, with required search fields (name, license number, NPI)
• Complaint filing — online complaint portal, downloadable complaint form, mailing address for complaints, what the board can and cannot investigate
• Disciplinary action database — link to the board’s disciplinary-action search, types of actions (reprimand, probation, suspension, revocation, voluntary surrender)
• Renewal cycle and CME requirements — biennial vs annual renewal, state-specific continuing medical education hours, mandatory topics (opioid prescribing, implicit bias, suicide assessment, etc.)
• Application and fees — initial license, endorsement from another state, IMLC Compact pathway, USMLE/COMLEX score-transfer mechanics
• Telehealth and out-of-state practice — state position on cross-state telemedicine, IMLC participation, post-PHE flexibilities
• Public records framework — state public-records / sunshine law citations applicable to board records
• Scope of board authority — what the board licenses (MDs only, MDs+DOs, also PAs/NPs), what it doesn’t (most boards do not license dentists, pharmacists, nurses)
• Federal cross-references — NPDB, DEA registration, HHS-OIG LEIE, CMS NPI registry
• Where the board is housed — independent agency, division of a larger department, sub-unit of state DOH or licensing department

How We Find and Verify — The Seven-Step Process

1. Identify the right authoritative source. We start with the official state board page on the state’s .gov domain, cross-checked against the FSMB member-board directory at fsmb.org/state-medical-boards.
2. Verify the URL is current. Board websites get redesigned and migrated. We click through every link before publication and confirm the destination is the actual page.
3. Verify the phone numbers. We dial-test main-line and complaint-line phone numbers periodically.
4. Verify the mailing address. Cross-checked against the board’s contact page and against USPS ZIP+4 lookup.
5. Document the license-verification, complaint, and disciplinary-action portals. Each is captured from the board’s own published page, not assumed.
6. Cross-check the legal framework. State Medical Practice Acts vary. We cite the actual statute (e.g. California Business & Professions Code Division 2 Chapter 5; Texas Occupations Code Title 3 Subtitle B; Florida Statutes Chapter 458 for MDs and Chapter 459 for DOs).
7. Editor sign-off. A second editor reviews the page end-to-end before it goes live, including a fresh check on the FCRA non-CRA notice, the NPDB credentialing carve-out, and the “not medical advice” framing.

The National Layer — Key Sources

Major State Boards You’ll Find on the Site

Who This Site Is For

• Patients and caregivers — verifying a physician’s licence before booking, looking up disciplinary history, filing a complaint about substandard care
• Hospital credentialing and medical-staff offices — using the state board as one input alongside NPDB, primary-source verification, and AMA Physician Profile
• Physicians and physician practices — initial licensure, endorsement from another state, IMLC Compact pathway, renewal, CME compliance, telehealth registration
• Medical-staff coordinators and credentialers — primary-source verification workflow
• Health-plan provider-relations and panel-credentialing teams — provider directory verification and re-credentialing cycles
• Locum tenens agencies and physician recruiters — multi-state license tracking
• Health journalists and policy researchers — disciplinary-action data, board structure, scope-of-practice variation
• Legal counsel — board investigation procedure, due-process rights, administrative-hearing rules; medical-malpractice coordination with state-court action
• Patient-safety advocates — understanding what boards do and do not investigate

What We Don’t Do

• We don’t operate a CRA, sell background checks, or provide FCRA-permissible-purpose reports
• We don’t operate as a credentialing verification organisation (CVO); we are not an alternative to NPDB query for hospital credentialing
• We don’t license, discipline, or register physicians — that is the state board
• We don’t take complaints about specific physicians — that goes to the state board
• We don’t represent physicians in board investigations — for that, retain healthcare-regulatory counsel
• We don’t provide medical advice — for that, see a licensed physician
• We don’t provide legal advice — for that, see a licensed attorney
• We don’t sell your data — see Privacy Policy
• We don’t host disciplinary records or replicate state-board databases; we link to the official portals where that information is published

How We Pay for the Site

state-medical-board.org/ is funded by display advertising. Editorial content — verified board contacts, walkthroughs, complaint procedures — is never altered to favour any advertiser. The official state board contact always comes first on every page, before any commercial reference. We do not accept advertising from operations that would conflict with the public-information mission of the site, including pay-to-remove disciplinary-record services or unlicensed credentialing operations. The full position is on our Editorial Policy and Disclaimer.

Corrections and Feedback

Board contact details change — board executive directors turn over, agencies are reorganised, the New York structure is unique, websites are redesigned, complaint portals are migrated. If you spot something on the site that doesn’t match the live board page, or you’ve called and confirmed something is wrong, please email us. Reader-reported corrections are our priority queue and get a response within seven business days.