You can help improve the critical shortage of qualified medical practitioners in the state, but you need to take action now.
Medical compacts are agreements between states to recognize licenses that medical professionals have obtained from other states. Participating in interstate medical compacts increases the supply of medical practitioners willing to relocate to a participating state. If a state is not a member of a compact, any doctor or nurse considering moving to that state would have to go through the lengthy and costly process of getting re-licensed to practice within that state.
Currently, New Mexico only participates in the Nurses compact.
Our failure to sign on to other interstate contracts for other medical professions is one of the key reasons for the shortage of doctors, surgeons, therapists, and other medical professionals. Ever wonder why you have to wait so long to get an appointment for a specialist? This is a key reason why.
You can help change that by taking action now. Governor Lujan Grisham has called a special session and is seeking to get legislation passed to join these other medical compacts. In the last regular session, similar legislation passed the New Mexico House of Representative with unanimous support from all representatives, both Democrats and Republicans.
What stands in the way of its passage? Key Democratic senators, including Senator Peter Wirth, who represents Santa Fe and who also serves as the Majority Leader of the Senate. The issue is even more urgent now: the "Big Beautiful Bill" that cut Medicaid to states like New Mexico included funding offsets for those cuts, especially to rural hospitals. But New Mexico will lose a large portion of those funding offsets unless we enter all the medical interstate compacts. We will lose two times: fewer doctors and less federal funding.
You can take action now to help persuade key legislators to improve access to healthcare by joining these compacts. Our friends at Think New Mexico have provided an incredibly simple way to communicate your concern about this issue. Just follow this link to their Action Center and click on the first "Take Action" button under the first topic of interstate medical compacts. Then all you need to do is enter your street address and zip code, and a draft email will be generated to the Governor, your local state representative, and your local state senator (for many of us, that will be Senator Wirth!). You can edit the draft email with details of your own personal healthcare experience before you press send.
Use Think New Mexico's simple way to communicate your concern about this issue!
Next, you can call your local representative or senator by using this phone list. Ask them to support the legislation approving New Mexico's participation in these interstate medical compacts. If you feel you need more background information, our friends from Santa Fe Indivisible SOS have provided this helpful document of talking points:
This is a critical moment for the future of healthcare in New Mexico. If we all take action now, we can help attract more medical professionals to the state and improve access for all who need care.
