Living in New York, working in Massachusetts
Can a New York nurse work in Massachusetts?
Massachusetts has adopted the compact but has not finished implementing it, so a multistate license from New York does not authorize practice in Massachusetts yet. Treat Massachusetts as non-compact for now and verify with its board before relying on privilege.
New York vs Massachusetts at a glance
| New York (home) | Massachusetts (work) | |
|---|---|---|
| Compact status | Non-compact | Pending |
| Multistate license for residents | No | No |
| Compact nurses can practice here | No | No |
| Board of nursing | New York board ↗ | Massachusetts board ↗ |
Status shown as of 2026-06-17. Compact law changes — confirm anything that affects your license with the state board.
Recommended next step
Contact the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing and the New York State Board of Nursing (Office of the Professions) to confirm current implementation before practicing.
Going the other way?
The answer is not the same in reverse. Living in Massachusetts and working in New York is a different question with a different answer, because the state that issues your license changes places with the state that has to honour it — Massachusetts to New York covers that direction.
Verify before you rely on this
Whether you can practice comes down to your actual license type, not just the two states’ status. Look your license up on Nursys to confirm it is single-state or multistate, then check Massachusetts’s current requirements with the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Nursing.
New York and Massachusetts share a border
Both are on the same side of the compact, so crossing this particular border does not change your licensure position the way it would at a compact seam. The usual cross-border questions still apply — where you actually reside, and which state each employer sits in.
Where each license is actually checked
These two states do not verify the same way, and the difference matters at different moments: New York is what you will be asked to produce, Massachusetts is what an employer there will run.
Your home state
New York
NYSED Office of the Professions verification ↗The Office of the Professions treats its online search as a primary source for verification. The part that catches people applying INTO New York is that the route depends on whether the state that issued your license participates in Nursys. Where it does, verification travels electronically. Where it does not, New York falls back to a paper instrument — Form 3, the Verification of Other Professional Licensure — which you send to your original licensing authority to complete and return to NYSED. That is a materially slower path, and it is chosen by your ISSUING state, not by you. We are deliberately not reproducing a list of non-participating states here: the lists published by different authorities disagree with each other, and at least one names a state whose own board documents its Nursys service. Check Nursys for your specific state rather than trusting any list, including ours.
Where you want to work
Massachusetts
Massachusetts license verification (Mass.gov) ↗Massachusetts states plainly that its Check a License result IS primary-source verification and that an employer may use and print it — so this is a one-step check, not a preliminary one. The trap is the license-number prefix. RNs and APRNs both use RN; practical nurses use LN, not LP. Searching an LPN under a guessed “LP” number returns nothing, which reads as an unlicensed nurse rather than a mistyped prefix. Names must also match the license exactly. A written verification for a foreign country or a non-board agency is a separate, paid, posted request — it is not the online result.
The law behind each side
Compact privilege is not a courtesy between states — it is each legislature having enacted the compact into its own code. These are the provisions that do it.
Your home state
New York
New York has no compact statute, because it has not enacted the compact. Practicing here means holding a New York license.
Scope is set separately. What you may actually do here comes from N.Y. Educ. Law art. 139; 8 NYCRR pt. 64 ↗.
Where you want to work
Massachusetts
Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 112A ↗Signed 20 November 2024. The statute is on the books, but the Board of Registration in Nursing has not completed implementation — so no multistate licenses are issued and compact privilege does not yet apply here. § 18 requires fingerprint-based state and national background checks, which is part of why implementation takes time.
Scope is set separately. What you may actually do here comes from Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 112, §§ 74–81C ↗.
Things to keep in mind
Frequently asked questions
Related pages
Sources & last reviewed
- NLC frequently asked questions— NCSBN / NurseCompact (nursecompact.com)
Covers multistate licenses, primary state of residence, the 60-day rule, telehealth, and license type coverage.
- NLC member states map & status— NCSBN / NurseCompact (nursecompact.com)
Identifies full members, partial implementation (Guam), and enacted/awaiting implementation (Massachusetts, U.S. Virgin Islands).
- Nursys QuickConfirm license verification— NCSBN / Nursys (nursys.com)
Recommended destination to verify whether a license is single-state or multistate.
Facts on this page were last reviewed against official sources on 2026-06-17. Compact law changes — always verify with your state board of nursing.