Georgia NP licensure. Worth it?

The board says applications are typically reviewed within 15 business days of receiving all required documents, in the order received. The real clock is assembling the complete file: fingerprints, two Nursys verifications, certifier and school documents. Past discipline or criminal history can lengthen review substantially, and nothing is guaranteed.

$160 in board fees on the standard path: $75 RN endorsement, $75 APRN authorization, and a $10 online processing fee. The board’s GAA checklist route for compact NPs not moving to Georgia runs $85. Prescribing adds a $150 protocol review filed with the Composite Medical Board by your delegating physician, GAPS fingerprints are vendor-priced, and Nursys runs $30 per license type.

For the RN layer, yes: Georgia implemented the Nurse Licensure Compact on January 19, 2018. The APRN authorization is Georgia’s own credential either way, and the board’s checklists split the pathway by residency and compact status, which is exactly the fork we sort out before anything is filed.

Yes. NP practice runs under a nurse protocol agreement with a delegating physician, signed by both and filed with the Georgia Composite Medical Board within 30 days of execution. The protocol is reviewed annually, carries required chart review, and the physician documents an onsite observation of your practice at least once a year.

Generally no: Georgia’s protocol rules bar APRN prescription drug orders for Schedule I and II substances, with one narrow carve-out your delegating physician can authorize for hydrocodone and oxycodone in emergency situations. Refills cap at 12 months from the original order, extended to 24 months for oral contraceptives, hormone replacement, and prenatal vitamins.

No. Georgia has not enacted the APRN Compact, and the compact isn’t operational anywhere yet: four of the seven states it needs have enacted it. Georgia’s own APRN authorization remains the only way to practice as an NP in Georgia. Our APRN Compact explainer covers the details.

Renewal is biennial in a fixed window, November 1 through January 31: $65 for the RN license and $65 plus a $10 processing fee for the APRN authorization. CE is light: keeping your national certification current satisfies the requirement, or 30 board-approved hours do, with no Georgia-mandated topics.

On average, no: $128,800 a year, about 6% below the national NP mean of $137,300. The Georgia case is scale: 11.3 million people in the eighth-largest state, with nearly 2.8 million of them living in designated primary-care shortage areas.