Verifying Florida Health Licenses

According to recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, well over 450,000 Floridian's are employed as healthcare practitioners.  This includes a wide variety of occupations, ranging from doctors and nurses to orthotists and prosthetists.  More than a dozen regulatory boards are involved in licensing healthcare practitioners in the State.

Florida, like most States, provides online tools that allow the general public to verify the health license status of practitioners that are licensed by the State.  Through Florida's health license verification portal, visitors can lookup the license status for more than 120 health profession designations. This includes checking on the health license status of  doctors, dentists, pharmacists, physician assistants, nurses, podiatrists, optometrists, occupational therapists, physical therapists and acupuncturtists.  Moreover, the Florida health license verification tool provides search results that includes a drilldown feature that offers additional information about each licensee.

To access Florida's primary online health license verification tool, visit our Florida Medical License Lookup page.  Besides the Florida's primary health license verification tool, it includes links to two other important online license status tools operated by the State.  One is the State operated portal to verify the license status of insurance professionals, for those wanting to confirm the license status of health insurance agents and brokers.  The other online tool is one that permits user to verify the license status of Florida's institutional healthcare providers, like hospitals, surgery centers and nursing homes.

Strong Job Outlook for APRNs

With employment projected to grow 31% from 2012 to 2022, the job outlook for Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs) is a strong one.  By comparison, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is anticipating 11% job growth for all occupations in the U.S. during the same period.  Advanced Practice Registered Nurse occupations include nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, and nurse practitioners.  All three of these APRN occupations are forecast by the BLS to experience much faster than average job growth.  The number of nurse anesthetist jobs is expected to reach 43,900 positions in 2022, up 25% from 2012.  Nurse midwife positions are projected to have an even faster 29% growth rate as the number of nurse midwife jobs is expected to reach 7,700 in 2022, up from 6,000 such positions in 2012.  Nurse practitioners held over 110,000 positions in 2012, making it the largest of the APRN occupations.  Even so, according to the BLS nurse practitioners have the strongest job growth outlook among the APRN occupations as the number of nurse practitioner jobs is expected to grow 34%, to 147,300 positions, from 2012 to 2022.

The strong job outlook for APRNs is underpinned by robust growth in the demand for healthcare services. Several factors, including the Affordable Care Act and its positive impact on the overall number of Americans with health insurance coverage, the increased emphasis on preventative care, and the large, aging baby-boom population will contribute to growing demand for healthcare services.

Also underlying the strong job outlook for APRNs are legislative trends that are gradually expanding the profession's practice authority to include more primary care services traditionally rendered by physicians.  In addition, APRNs  are becoming more widely recognized by the public as a source for primary healthcare, another ongoing development that will boost job growth prospects for the profession.

For a look at the job outlook for other health professions, visit Healthcare Job Outlook.