If you have ever moved, traveled or gone to college in another state, you may have found that your doctor suddenly could not see you by video. A new coalition launched on September 17 wants Congress to fix that.
ATA Action, the advocacy arm of the American Telemedicine Association, formed the Cross-State Care Coalition, co-chaired with Johns Hopkins Medicine. Its goal is bipartisan federal legislation that modernizes how clinician licensure works across state lines.
The problem it is trying to solve
Medical licenses are issued by states. In most cases a clinician must be licensed in the state where the patient is sitting during the visit, not where the clinician is. That rule made sense when care meant walking into an office. It creates odd results for telehealth: a cancer patient cannot get a virtual second opinion from a specialist two states away, or a long-time patient loses access during a summer at the lake.
Interstate compacts such as the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact make it faster to get more licenses, but clinicians still need one for every state.
Who is in
Founding members named at launch include Johns Hopkins Medicine, AdventHealth, MedStar Health, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Sanford Health, Access TeleCare, Clara, Talkiatry and Teladoc Health. Others are invited to join.
What it is asking for
The coalition says it is not trying to federalize medical licensing. It wants narrow federal pathways for specific situations, while states keep control of standards of care, discipline and malpractice. Its five priorities are:
- Continuity of care for established patients who travel or cross state lines.
- Access to rare, complex and subspecialty care, such as virtual second opinions.
- Decentralized clinical trials that follow participants across states.
- Patient protection, with clear liability, verified credentials and reporting to state boards.
- Records that can move between out-of-state specialists and local primary care.
The coalition builds on the LIFTT Initiative that ATA and Johns Hopkins launched in March. At that launch, Kyle Zebley, ATA’s CEO, described the approach as “intentionally narrow yet highly meaningful.”
What happens next
No bill text has been released yet. Licensure reform has stalled before, mostly over states’ concern about losing oversight. The coalition’s narrow framing is clearly built to answer that.
For patients, nothing changes today. If you use telehealth, the clinician still needs to be licensed where you are at the time of the visit, so tell your provider if you will be in another state.
Photo: Historic photograph of The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Detroit Publishing Company via Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
Sources
- HIT Consultant: ATA Action launches Cross-State Care Coalition (Sept. 17, 2026)
- Healthcare IT News: ATA Action forms coalition to advance interstate telehealth licensure
- American Telemedicine Association: ATA and Johns Hopkins Medicine launch initiative to overcome barriers to interstate telehealth access
- Interstate Medical Licensure Compact
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