Maine physician licensing.

The MD board’s FAQ estimates 45 to 90 days for a clinical license, and its 2025 licensing report averaged 65.74 days. The osteopathic board says it tries to process a DO application within 60 days, though it can take 90 or more, and a completed file then goes to its next monthly meeting for approval. Maine law sets no deadline for either board to decide. On the compact route, IMLCC’s Year 9 averages were 38 days from application to a Letter of Qualification, then 22 days from qualification to issued licenses, and the MD board says it now issues initial licenses through the compact instantly. Around the merger, the licensing database is offline from noon December 29, 2026, to January 4, 2027.

$1,098.50 for an MD and $813.50 for a DO with a first FCVS profile, which both boards require, or $802.50 and $452.50 with an existing one. That is the MD board’s $700 (a $600 application fee and the $100 jurisprudence exam) or the osteopathic board’s $350, plus FSMB’s $395 profile fee and $3.50 NPDB report, and for a DO’s first profile NBOME’s $65 COMLEX-USA transcript. Through the IMLC, compact fees are $1,400 for an MD or $1,050 for a DO. Notary fees come on top, and for DOs so do the online payment processor’s fee and FSMB’s one-time $60 Uniform Application fee if it applies. No source states the DO fees the Maine Board of Medicine will charge from 2027.

A license issued before January 1, 2027 stays in effect until it expires and is reissued under the Maine Board of Medicine at your next renewal, and the rules your board applies today stay in force after that date until the new board amends them, through rulemaking with a public comment period. The 2026 law has no clause on applications still pending when the boards merge, but it makes the new board the successor in every way to both boards’ licensing powers, and to the compact. The boards’ own documents put the switch on January 4, 2027, with the licensing database offline from noon December 29, 2026. MD fees sit in a board rule and carry over; the DO fees come from a board fee schedule, and no source states the DO fees the new board will charge, since its fees are set by rule. The new law’s own requirements, such as active clinical practice in the previous 24 months or a plan showing your competency, apply from January 1, 2027.

Yes. Maine’s compact law took effect November 1, 2017, both boards issue licenses through the compact, and either can be your state of principal license. On January 1, 2027 the Maine Board of Medicine becomes the successor to the compact for both boards; the boards’ August 2026 merger notes say the compact is working on updates for a smooth transition, and IMLCC has not published how its Maine entries will read after the change. In IMLCC’s Year 9, April 2025 to March 2026, the Board of Licensure in Medicine approved 49 Letters of Qualification and issued 237 licenses through the compact, and the osteopathic board approved 10 and issued 56. The MD board says it now issues initial licenses through the compact instantly, and an MD licensed this way completes Maine’s jurisprudence exam within 14 calendar days.

Not until January 1, 2027: today MDs apply to the Board of Licensure in Medicine and DOs to the Board of Osteopathic Licensure, under separate laws, rules, and fees, $700 against $350 to apply and $500 against $525 to renew every two years. Only MDs take the jurisprudence exam, and while the MD board’s staff can issue a license on a file that meets every criterion, the osteopathic board approves each completed file at its monthly meeting. From January 1, 2027 one Maine Board of Medicine licenses both, under a law that keeps them separate professions, and each board’s rules stay in force until the new board amends them.

Yes, apart from one narrow MD registration: Maine’s joint telehealth rule requires an active Maine license or, for an MD, a $500 registration for interstate consultative telemedicine. The registration covers only consultations requested by a physician, advanced practice registered nurse, or physician associate licensed in Maine, who keeps authority over the patient’s care, and it rules out a Maine office and meeting patients or taking their calls in Maine; DOs have no equivalent. It is available under the current statute through December 31, 2026; that statute is repealed with the merger, and no source says what happens to the registration after it. The MD board’s 2025 licensing report says most applicants, once staff explain its limits, ask for a full license instead.

Not as a separate application. Maine’s MD law lets the board grant licensure by reciprocity at its discretion, but no board page, form, or rule offers an application for it, so every MD applies through the Uniform Application, FCVS, and the jurisprudence exam; the merged board’s law, from 2027, has no reciprocity section. A 2025 law repealed the osteopathic statute’s endorsement section. For physicians who meet its criteria, the IMLC leads to what the MD board calls an expedited clinical license.

A jurisprudence exam for MDs, yes; fingerprints on a direct application, no. MD applicants pass the board’s online, open-book exam on Maine law with a score of at least 75, for $100 with the application, and retake it about every four years; MDs licensed through the compact take it within 14 calendar days of issuance. DOs have no jurisprudence exam. Neither board fingerprints a direct applicant: a state and FBI check applies only when a Maine licensee asks for a Letter of Qualification with Maine as state of principal license, and with another state as your SPL, that state runs the check.

Yes, at both boards: the MD board’s rule requires FCVS for a clinical license, and the osteopathic board has required an FCVS profile for a permanent license since February 1, 2022, though FSMB’s list shows it as only accepting FCVS. A first profile costs $395, or $99 to send an existing one, plus a $3.50 NPDB report on the FCVS invoice. FSMB includes the Uniform Application at no extra charge for the MD board, which it lists as requiring FCVS; because its list shows the osteopathic board as accepting FCVS, FSMB’s one-time $60 fee may apply to a DO’s first Uniform Application. FSMB says it typically processes a first profile in roughly 35 days.

Renewal every two years by the end of your birth month, $500 for an MD or $525 for a DO; 40 Category 1 CME hours (MD), or current ABMS certification in their place, or 100 hours with 40 osteopathic (DO), plus 3 hours on opioid prescribing for every MD and for DOs who prescribe opioids; for MDs, the jurisprudence exam every four years; Prescription Monitoring Program registration and checks before benzodiazepine and opioid prescriptions; electronic opioid prescriptions; and a separate $888 DEA registration for Maine. There is no state controlled-substance registration. A license issued before January 1, 2027 renews under the Maine Board of Medicine, whose law caps the renewal fee at $600.