Department of State briefs House committee on licensing reforms; nurse, medical compacts set for June 2025

Acting Commissioner Aaron Claggett of the Department of State told the House Professional Licensure Committee that the Department has reduced application processing times across boards, will implement several interstate licensure compacts in June 2025, and has selected a new vendor to replace its licensing system in 2026. Michael Rosenberry, director of the Bureau of Enforcement Investigations (BEI), provided enforcement and inspection statistics and described inspector training and procedures.

The session was an informational briefing on the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs (BPOA), licensure compacts, licensure modernization, fee structure, the disciplinary and inspection process, and Sunrise evaluations — topics the Department said affect licensees across health, business and trade boards and the public who rely on licensed services.

Claggett summarized BPOA’s role and recent operational changes. BPOA, she said, was established in 1963 to support licensing boards and commissions and “protect the health, safety, and welfare of the public.” She reported staffing and organizational elements (division chiefs, board administrators, program and quality‑assurance analysts) and said the bureau employs more than 350 people to process applications, handle renewals, perform enforcement work and support boards. Claggett cited board sizes and licensee populations: the Nurse Licensing Division has about 340,000 licensees; cosmetology about 127,000; pharmacy about 46,000; the Real Estate Commission about 67,000; and vehicle dealer licensing about 42,000.

Claggett also described technology and process changes aimed at speeding applications. “Since I started here, our processing time in the nurse licensing division was about 90 days. We’ve gotten that processing time down to 6 days,” she said. She described automating Authorization to Test (ATT) and temporary practice permit workflows (from roughly six weeks to one day), and a pilot Pittsburgh call center devoted to nursing board callers. That pilot, the Department reported, reduced the abandonment rate from 24% to 1%, average wait time from 14 minutes to 1 minute, and the longest wait time from three hours to 21 minutes, while maintaining call volume (about 7,000 calls in the earlier period and about 6,000 a year later).

On licensure compacts, Claggett said the Department has final approval to implement the compacts and is “tentatively scheduled to implement the compacts in June of 2025.” She reported partial implementations already in place: partial participation in the Nurse Licensure Compact beginning in 2023 and partial implementation of the medical/osteopathic compact in 2024. Claggett said the Department can track participation in the medical and osteopathic compacts and reported that, as of March 2025, 715 licensees participated in partial implementation of the medical compact and 134 licensees in the osteopathic compact.

Claggett said the Department has selected Systems Automation as the vendor for a new licensure platform named Evoke. The Department is in requirements and discovery work and plans a phased implementation: phase 1 in spring 2026 for 11 boards and phase 2 in the second half of 2026 for the remaining 18 boards. She advised the committee that adding additional interstate compacts before Evoke is implemented could delay their operational rollout and asked that new compact legislation be held until the system replacement is complete.

Claggett described licensing finance and fees: BPOA is self‑funded, receives no General Fund appropriations, and boards adopt fee schedules by regulation. She said fees are reviewed to ensure they cover operating costs and are graduated across renewal cycles to account for cost fluctuations. She also described application checklists, discrepancy notices when items are missing, and a new QR code on printable licenses that links to the Department’s verification site.

Michael Rosenberry, director of BEI, described investigations and inspections. He said BEI has regional offices in Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Scranton and reported that investigators and inspectors are often former law enforcement or professionals from the regulated industries. Rosenberry described complaint sources (public, licensees, boards, media, law enforcement) and investigative work (interviews, evidence collection) and said investigators present findings to prosecuting attorneys for charging decisions. He reported that investigators handled thousands of assignments in 2024, saying “our investigators last year in calendar year 2024 conducted 7,721 investigative assignments.” Rosenberry also reported inspection volumes and staffing: BEI has 35 inspectors statewide (including four mortuary inspectors and six pharmacy/drug program specialists), and conducted 29,264 inspections for facilities in calendar year 2024; the average elapsed time for a new business or directed inspection in 2024 was under four days.

Rosenberry described training and tools for inspectors. New hires undergo a field training program that includes regulation‑specific instruction and supervised field work; inspectors use tablet checklists specific to the type of business they inspect and can view relevant regulation text from the device. Rosenberry said BEI conducts ongoing training with prosecutors and that retraining was done for topics that drew particular attention, such as med spas.

Committee members asked for follow‑up materials and clarifications. Representative Joe Emmerich asked about call center “abandonment rate,” and Claggett defined it as calls where callers hung up before being answered. Emmerich also asked whether the nurse compact would be fully operational by June; Claggett replied, “Yes, we do. Fully complete by June.” Representative Arvin Venkat asked whether the Department recommends any additional compacts as a legislative priority; Claggett asked that new compacts be delayed until the Evoke implementation to avoid additional delays in operationalizing those compacts. The Department agreed to follow up with lists the committee requested (professions that have received Sunrise recommendations and a list of perceived licensure barriers).

The Department of State and BEI emphasized that some internal figures reflect different reporting groupings (for example, investigator and support counts shown in different slides). The Department said it would provide requested lists and follow up with committee members on several items.

The committee thanked Claggett and Rosenberry for the briefing and signaled continued legislative work on compacts, advisory opinions and other licensure matters.