In a year of isolation, seeking professional therapy can be an excellent resource for many who have struggled with the mental burdens 2020 has entailed. Even with precautions of staying home, more and more practitioners have been able to meet the need of their patients with the market resources available making virtual therapy sessions possible. As the needs of clients change, therapists are able and willing to accommodate to meet those needs. This seems like a perfect adaptation which the market can provide, but unfortunately markets aren't always totally free from disruption - and in this case, this comes in the form of occupational licensing.
Occupational licensing, at its best, seeks to require professionals in different fields of work to prove their competency to provide customers with a level of reassurance of safety. Unfortunately, as is the case with many bureaucratic initiatives, it more often than not becomes a barrier to entry for market competition and hurts small businesses and customers the most while favoring bigger, established players and protecting them from competition.
In this particular case, Elizabeth Brokamp practices teletherapy for women in Virginia, but is unable to extend that practice to existing patience who move out of state due to arbitrary restrictions on licensing. The regulations that prevent her from practicing with people who voluntarily choose her services because they cross a state border seems arbitrary and unnecessarily restrictive, which is why she is currently engaged in a lawsuit to help remove unhelpful restrictions. As reported on Reason:
Brokamp would like to keep talking to patients who relocate out of Virginia and to accept new clients who live across the river in Washington, D.C. But occupational licensing rules in D.C. and elsewhere make this illegal.
"It is painful for me to have to tell people in D.C. that I am not allowed to help them right now," said Brokamp in a statement. "People should be able to engage with the counselor who can best meet their needs wherever they live and continue seeing that counselor if they move across the country. I hope my case can start removing senseless boundaries to teletherapy."
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The issue ultimately goes way beyond Brokamp and her patients, striking at the heart of how to handle telemedicine during the pandemic and beyond. It's a point of major contention between powerful political groups.
"States generally limit who can practice medicine within their boundaries by requiring providers to be licensed by that state's medical board," notes Eric Wicklund at mHealth Intelligence. "This poses a problem for providers treating patients in more than one state as well as those with telehealth platforms designed to reach patients no matter where they're living."
