How to check a prescriber licence in any state

A GLP-1 prescription from a telehealth program is signed by a person. That person holds a licence from a state board, has a federal provider number, and may or may not have a disciplinary history. All three are public. This page is the ten-minute version of checking them; each state page has the links for its own board.

Step 1: get the name

Before you pay, ask the program for the full name and credential of the prescriber who will review your case, and after the visit ask for a copy of the prescription. A prescription names the prescriber. If the company cannot or will not tell you who the prescriber is, you cannot verify anything, and FDA's March 3, 2026 letters to 30 telehealth companies show why the question matters: the agency cited marketing that obscured what was being sold and by whom.

Step 2: the state board lookup

Go to the board for the state where you were located during the visit. On each state page the card's first row links to the physician lookup and says whether the link loaded when we checked or has to be opened in a browser because the board blocks automated visitors.

Search by last name. Common results:

• Active or Current: the licence is in force. Note the licence type (MD, DO, and in a few states a limited or telemedicine-specific licence) and the expiry date.
• Expired, Lapsed, Inactive, Retired: no authority to prescribe in that state today.
• Probation, Restricted, Conditions: licensed, but under board terms. Open the board order; the terms sometimes bar prescribing certain drug classes or bar telemedicine practice altogether.
• Revoked, Suspended, Surrendered: not licensed.
• No record: try the osteopathic board if the state has one, the nursing board if the prescriber might be a nurse practitioner, and the physician assistant board. Then try DocInfo, the Federation of State Medical Boards' national search, which shows every state where a physician holds or has held a licence. If none of those return the person, ask the company again and do not proceed until you get an answer that checks out.

Nurse practitioners prescribe GLP-1s in many programs. They are licensed by the state board of nursing, not the medical board, and in some states also hold a separate prescriptive authority certificate. Physician assistants are on the medical board's lookup in most states and on a separate PA board in a few. The state page names the physician board; the nursing board is one search away on the same state site in almost every case.

Step 3: the NPI Registry

The National Provider Identifier is a ten-digit federal number every US prescriber has. The NPI Registry is free and needs no login. Search by name and state. The record shows the credential (MD, DO, NP, PA), the taxonomy (specialty), a practice address and a phone number. Use it to confirm you have the right person when the board lookup returns several with the same name, and to see whether the practice address matches what the program told you.

The NPI is not a licence and does not expire. It confirms identity, not authority.

Step 4: disciplinary history

Most boards show board actions on the licence record itself, or on a separate "disciplinary actions" or "board orders" page linked from the home page. DocInfo aggregates physician actions across states. An action is not automatically disqualifying; read the order. What you are looking for is anything that touches prescribing, telemedicine, records or honesty.

What an active licence does not tell you

It does not tell you the prescriber has treated obesity before, that the program's follow-up is adequate, that the pharmacy is licensed, or that the product is what it says it is. Those are separate questions: the pharmacy is checked on the board of pharmacy site linked in the second row of each state card, and the Compounding Explained site's vetting checklist covers the product. The FormBlends directory lists licensed providers and pharmacies; it is a starting list, not a substitute for the lookup.

If something is wrong

If the person is not licensed in your state, or the licence is restricted in a way that covers what they did, the same board site has a complaint form. Keep the prescription, the receipts and any messages. For a product problem, FDA's MedWatch takes reports from patients.