Physician duties · NP · New York
Signing for a Nurse Practitioner in New York: what the physician takes on
The agreement is mandatory for the clinician, which makes its duties mandatory for you. New York calls the instrument a Written Practice Agreement.
Independent-practice exemption (§6902) requires ≥3,600 practice hours; below that, a written practice agreement + protocols with a specialty-matched physician is required, plus quarterly chart review and a 4-NP off-site ratio cap. This is a repeatedly-extended SUNSET provision, currently through July 1, 2030 (Ch. 57, Laws of 2026, signed May 28, 2026) — confirmed against the codified statute text, not permanent law.
Independent practice requires: ≥3,600 hours of practice as a certified NP (in NY, another state, or federal/VA/Armed Forces/PHS service); Below that threshold: a written practice agreement AND written practice protocols with a physician qualified in the NP's specialty are required.
What you take on as the physician
The rules the physician relationship has to follow. Each fact comes from the statute or board rule listed under sources.
Proximity
NP under written practice agreement (below 3,600 practice hours): No proximity requirement
No codified physical-proximity/radius standard found — the statute's focus is the written agreement/protocol and quarterly chart review, not physical location.
Supervision ratio
NPs not located on the same physical premises as the collaborating physician: Up to 4 at a time
'No physician shall enter into practice agreements with more than four nurse practitioners who are not located on the same physical premises' (Educ. Law §6902) — this caps OFF-SITE collaborative relationships specifically; NPs co-located with the physician on the same premises appear to fall outside this numeric cap entirely.
Chart review
Not codified — left to the agreement
Meeting cadence
NP under written practice agreement (below 3,600 practice hours): Quarterly, in person or via telehealth
The collaborating physician must review patient records 'in a timely fashion but in no event less often than every three months' (Educ. Law §6902; 8 NYCRR §29.1) — this is a chart-review cadence, not a formal in-person meeting mandate; op.nysed.gov guidance explicitly states 'no minimum number of charts for review is mandated,' only the quarterly minimum frequency.
Prescriptive authority
Covered by the practice agreement · controlled substances permitted
Schedule II-V, limited to the NP's certified specialty area (Educ. Law §6902(3)(b)), after NYSED-approved pharmacology coursework and a prescriptive-authority certificate, plus DEA registration and NYS Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement 'official prescription' authorization. Subject to the same I-STOP e-prescribing/PMP-consultation mandate as physicians/PAs.
Written agreement
Required
Branches on the 3,600-hour threshold. Below it: a written practice agreement AND written practice protocols are required, with a physician qualified in the NP's specialty — the agreement must specify that the collaborating physician's diagnosis or treatment prevails if the two disagree. At/above the threshold, CONFIRMED (verbatim, read directly from the current codified §6902 text): the NP 'shall not be required to comply' with the written-agreement/protocol requirement at all — a mandatory full exemption, not merely optional. (A different bracketed version of the same subdivision, taking over July 1, 2030, changes the verb to 'may comply... in lieu of' — i.e., the NP gets a choice, but is still never compelled into a physician relationship — so the 'no obligation' answer holds under both the current and forthcoming text.)
Practice ownership (corporate practice of medicine)
Licensee-only ownership required — Same strict same-profession-ownership regime as `pa` — an NP may own an NP/nursing-scope PC or PLLC (Bus. Corp. Law §§1503/1506/1507 / LLC Law §1207(b) require all shareholders/members to be licensed in the SAME profession as the entity's services), but not a medical (physician-scope) PC/PLLC — confirmed by the parallel LLC Law §1203 rule for medical-services PLLCs (Article 131/Medicine licensees only).
Legal sources for these rules (7)
- N.Y. Educ. Law § 6902 (practice of nursing, NP collaboration/independence framework)
- N.Y. Educ. Law § 6910 (NP certification)
- NYSED Office of the Professions — NP practice requirements
- 8 NYCRR Part 64 — Nursing regulations
- NYSED 'NP-CR' Collaborative Relationships attestation form — exists per NYSED's site structure, but fetch attempts returned only undecodable PDF binary; not independently read. Per the confirmed statutory text, no such attestation is legally required above 3,600 hours regardless of whether NYSED still offers/requests it in practice.
- S2360/A1220 (2025-26 session) — pending bill to make independence permanent, not enacted
- A10007-C/S9007-C (2026 Health and Mental Hygiene budget bill) — Ch. 57, Laws of 2026, signed 5/28/2026, extended the independence sunset to July 1, 2030 (confirmed against the codified §6902 text itself; the bill's own mechanical language wasn't independently readable)
What physicians charge for this role
Typical monthly compensation in New York
$500 – $600
Estimate for one Nurse Practitioner. Standard-tier state.
About New York's rules
New York combines an unusually strict general corporate-practice-of-medicine regime (physician/same-profession-only PC/PLLC ownership) with two notable exceptions: pharmacy ownership is NOT restricted to pharmacists (Educ. Law §6808), and midwifery (CNM) is its own fully independent practice act (Art. 140), unlike the physician-collaboration model governing NP/PMHNP. CRNA has no dedicated practice statute at all — governed only by DOH facility regulation. NP/PMHNP independence (≥3,600 hours) is a repeatedly-extended sunset provision (currently through July 1, 2030), not permanent law.
Other clinicians in New York: see the state overview.