After Certification
For those of you who are waiting to take the boards and plan
to practice in North Carolina, my home state, there is still a fairly long and
winding road ahead of you to NP officialdom. There's not much room for preplanning
since everything must happen in sequence and it takes a good month between
passing the board and receiving the DEA number. In my case, since my health
director wanted me to start a week after passing my boards and allowed me to
work under the locum tenens MD until I was official, I didn't "fly solo" until
6 weeks into my job.
This was the sequence of events in my case:
- Passed the boards.
- Informed AANP to forward
my results to the NCBON and submitted an official transcript as required.
- Waited about 2 weeks for
my official board certificate because the number goes on the NCBON's
application to practice.
- Once received, had my
consulting MD sign the supervising physician statement, filled out the online
application at the NCBON's website, printed it out, attached a recent
passport type picture, and put the package in the mail. Duke had to
simultaneously send a notarized certified letter to the board documenting
my course work.
- After approval by the
board of nursing, the application goes to the medical board for final
approval. It took another 10 days before I received my license.
- Once I had my license
number, I applied for a National Provider Identifier (available
immediately and took minutes online).
- With the NPI number in
hand, I then applied for the DEA number, which costs $500. It came in 2
days and was effective immediately, so my employer was able to add me to
the liability insurance, and ta-da, NP officialdom!
A note about the DEA number, NC, SC and GA are handled
through Georgia and the average for NC, at least, seems to be about 2 days. My
classmate in New Mexico is still waiting for hers after 6 weeks, and a
classmate in Tennessee waited 5 weeks before getting it and it'll take 7 to 10
days before it becomes effective.
It's hard to believe that there's such a difference among
the states. What have been some of your experiences with this process?