I have a total of 12 active and inactive state licenses. I do not keep them all active at the same time because it can get pretty expensive. I just have 3 or 4 licenses active at any given time to increase my job options.
Earlier this year, I received an opportunity to help a physician owned practice remotely (per diem). This required me to reactivate all of my inactive state licenses. It has been interesting to see how each state differs from this process. Just to clarify, I am using the term reactivate, because you can only renew your licenses if it has been less than a year (in most states) since it has expired. Reactivation fees are more than renewal fees. My Florida, Ohio, and Arizona licenses were already active.
After paying the reactivation fees, my California licenses were active within a few hours, which was awesome. Besides doing the application online, I had to upload proof of my CEUs. My Texas, Colorado, Maine, and Virginia licenses took 1 day to be active after paying the fees. I did these online and the process was straightforward.
My Wisconsin license took 1 month to reactivate, only because they needed a copy of my multistate RN license. So, they mailed me a letter with the email address to send them the document. After submitting the document, my license was active within days.
The remaining 3 states have been the most complicated ones to reactivate. Kentucky required me to obtain fingerprints AGAIN. This is in comparison to the other states that just recognize the fingerprints you already have on file from initial licensure. I am sure most of you can agree obtaining fingerprints is annoying. The facilities that do the fingerprints are only open during hours that I am working, so I try to go during my lunch break.
Then both Illinois and Washington state only accept paper applications for reactivating licenses. What are we, in the stone ages? Not to mention, I had to reactivate both the RN and NP licenses since these are still not compact license states.
Illinois requires 80 hours of CEUs which you have to submit proof of. This was crazy to me since FL (my home state) only requires 24 hours of CEUs every 2 years. I had to spend days acquiring the other dozens of hours. Additionally, Washington requests proof of recent employment in another state in order to reactivate your licenses. It took 3 weeks to get my licenses reactivated. However, even though I paid $435 to reactivate those licenses, they are going to expire in 4 months because renewal is during the month of your birthday -_-
I’ll keep in mind the states that are not as “reactivation friendly”, to avoid having my licenses lapse there again in the future. States like CA are “reactivation friendly” but the fees are drastically more expensive compared to just renewing.
