Urge your lawmakers to convene a special session to pass the rest of the interstate health care worker compacts!
When the legislature adjourned last month, some urgent business was left unfinished: joining eight interstate compacts for health care workers.
While Senate Bill 1 was passed to bring New Mexico into the doctor compact, bills to join compacts for psychologists, counselors, EMTs, physician’s assistants, speech therapists and audiologists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, and dentists died in Senate Committees after passing the House unanimously.
As we wrote in a recent opinion editorial, New Mexicans need these compacts now: students with learning disabilities are waiting a year or more for appointments with speech therapists as their conditions worsen; 845,000 New Mexicans live in an area with fewer than one behavioral health care provider per 30,000 residents; and New Mexico needs an additional 2,326 EMTs just to meet national benchmarks.
Along with increasing access to care, there is also federal money at stake. In New Mexico’s successful application for $211 million in federal funding for rural hospitals, the state pledged to join four compacts: for physicians, physician assistants (PAs), EMTs, and psychologists. During the session, the Chief Medical Officer of the New Mexico Health Care Authority testified that the agency is concerned that some of that $211 million could be clawed back if the PA, EMT, and psychologist compacts are not passed this year. The state also stands to lose out on additional money from the next round of federal funding this fall.
So we are urging Governor Lujan Grisham to convene a special session to pass the rest of the compacts this year. The governor has consistently supported the compacts, as has the House, which passed them unanimously in 2025 and 2026. The key is getting enough state senators on board.
