Elizabeth Hovde of the Washington Policy Center states that multistate license holders not only increase access to care across state lines when necessary, they also maintain and augment patient safety
Elizabeth Hovde
Washington Policy Center
A House committee was scheduled to have a public hearing today (March 22), as it again considers allowing Washington state to join the multistate Nurse Licensure Compact. Doing so could benefit patient access to needed care, helping supply caregivers promptly in pandemic times and given our state’s nursing shortage. Additionally, joining the compact is a worker rights issue. Nurses should be able to take their skills from state to state with fewer unnecessary barriers.
Senate Bill 5499 passed in the Senate, while a compact-joining bill in the House did not. Hopefully, that does not spell doom for this second consideration of the good policy idea.
Opposition to the idea has been about safety and registration. Keeping track of nurses in our state can be handled and should not hold up our state from acquiring this needed workforce solution. And safety concerns are outdated.
Safety is prioritized in the compact. Nurses must comply with the practice laws of each state, compact states have the authority to take disciplinary action against violators, and a study comparing discipline rates of multistate-license holders to single-state license holders shows compact participation doesn’t pose an elevated risk to patient safety. From the study: “The overall discipline rates of nurses in NLC and non-NLC states were virtually identical (0.24% versus 0.23%). However, a further breakdown of the data revealed the annual discipline rate of nurses holding single-state licenses across both non-NLC and NLC states was between two to four times higher than the rate of multistate license holders.” Read the full study here.
Multistate license holders not only increase access to care across state lines when necessary, they also maintain and augment patient safety.
I wrote a white paper in the fall about the compact and the outdated arguments against it. Read it for more information, and hope the House makes progress on joining the Nurse Licensure Compact.
Elizabeth Hovde is a policy analyst and the director of the Centers for Health Care and Worker Rights at the Washington Policy Center. She is a Clark County resident.
Also read:
- Opinion: IBR’s evasive, misleading and dishonest excuses for higher cost
Joe Cortright argues the Interstate Bridge Replacement Program has withheld detailed cost estimates while offering contradictory explanations for rising costs tied to the I-5 Bridge project. - Opinion: The limits for drug-impaired driving
Target Zero Manager Doug Dahl explains how Washington law defines drug-impaired driving and how officers are trained to recognize impairment beyond alcohol limits. - Opinion: ‘Please make your voice heard by taking my legislative priorities survey’
Rep. John Ley invites Clark County residents to share their views by participating in a legislative priorities survey during the 2026 session. - POLL: Do the proposed changes to the Clark County Council’s Rules of Procedure suggest the council lacked authority in 2025?
A new reader poll asks whether proposed changes to the Clark County Council’s Rules of Procedure indicate the council lacked clear authority during a 2025 board removal. - Letter: ‘HSD needs to give a detailed line-item accounting of where the last levy went, and of how they plan to use this one’
Randall Schultz-Rathbun urges Hockinson School District to provide detailed, transparent accounting of past and proposed levy spending before asking voters for additional funds.
