For nurse practitioners · Colorado

Practice free at licensure; prescribing earns out.

Colorado APRNs hold independent practice authority from licensure, but full prescriptive authority requires first obtaining provisional prescriptive authority and then completing a 750-hour structured prescribing mentorship with a Colorado physician or fully-prescribing APRN.

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The moment

The transition, and the moment it ends

Colorado splits the question in two, and the split matters. Practice authority is fully independent at licensure — no physician oversight of the clinical role, ever. The transition applies only to prescribing: provisional prescriptive authority first, then a 750-hour structured prescribing mentorship with a Colorado physician or a fully-prescribing APRN, completed within three years of the provisional grant.

The transition

750-hour prescribing mentorship (completed within 3 years of the provisional grant); practice itself is independent from day one

The moment it ends

The mentor's signature and attestation verifying successful completion of the 750-hour mentorship, which converts provisional prescriptive authority to full prescriptive authority through the Board of Nursing

The timeline

SB 23-167 signed and effective May 25, 2023 (reduced mentorship from 1,000 hours set by HB 20-1216 in 2020; approximately 3,600 hours before that)

The statute

C.R.S. §12-255-112(4)(b)(I)(A), as amended by SB 23-167 (2023)

Worth knowing

SB 23-167 (signed May 25, 2023) not only cut the prescribing mentorship to 750 hours — it made it unlawful for a mentor to require payment or employment as a condition of the mentorship, outlawing Colorado's pay-to-mentor market.

C.R.S. §12-255-112(4)(b)(I)(A), as amended by SB 23-167 (2023)

Scope and carve-outs

The grant and the strings, at equal weight

Practice scope is fully independent at licensure with no physician oversight; the transition gate applies only to prescribing. During the provisional period the APRN prescribes within the mentorship; after full authority, prescribing includes controlled substances subject to the opioid-prescription limits built into C.R.S. 12-255-112. Provisional authority expires if the mentorship is not completed within 3 years.

The watch

Pending in Colorado

Statutes move, boards write rules, sunsets arrive. This watch is checked against primary sources on a standing cadence — last verified 11 August 2026 — and every item links the source it was read from.

Sunset ahead

Colorado's Nurse Practice Act repeals September 1, 2027 unless continued; the sunset review is underway now.

Colorado DORA, Office of Policy, Research & Regulatory Reform — Review Schedule

Every jurisdiction, every item — The Watch →.

What Gale runs

The inventory, split honestly. Nothing dark is dressed as live.

In the product today

  • Chat runs the practice — say what you need in your own words, and Gale books it, finds the guide, or opens the screen already filled in.
  • Scheduling and the calendar.
  • Notes, with a scribe that drafts during the visit — you stay the final editor of every note.
  • Telehealth where the chart lives.
  • The patient record — see a sample chart, no signup.
  • Superbills for the patient who wants to claim out-of-network benefits.
  • The Fee Schedule — the one Gale document that states the fee.
  • Your practice page, in the public directory compiled from the NPPES registry.
  • Your credentials in one place — every license, DEA registration, board certification and plan enrollment you already hold, with reminders at 90, 60 and 30 days before one expires. Gale checks your NPI against the national registry and marks what it checked. It does not file applications; a credentialing service can.
  • Referrals from colleagues through your own link, acknowledged and booked in one place, and a view of which referral sources send you patients and which have gone quiet.
  • Practice notes on your public page, and your own notes on Gale’s health articles in the content library — credited to you, and nothing is public until you publish it.
  • An activity and access log that records who opened, changed or exported a patient’s chart, and when.
  • Connect Claude to set up your services, rates and hours by talking to it. It cannot open a patient record, move money or sign anything.

Opening with the founding cohort

  • Concierge memberships — a monthly plan your practice sells on its own terms. Not sellable yet: enrollment fails closed behind a legal switch until counsel clears it. No countdown — when it clears, it clears.
  • The loop tracker — every referral, lab, and question a visible loop with an owner, a state, and a promised window. Closing one requires an outcome note; nothing silently expires.
  • The guided founding sequence — practice setup walked step by step with the first cohort: entity, posted prices, the practice page, the first visit.
  • Currents — the regulatory watch for your state and the latest evidence for your specialty, dated, sourced, and re-verified on a standing cadence. Quiet weeks say so.

Built, on sample data for now

  • Insurance billing — a billing console, coding you review and attest, and every claim followed from draft to paid. Today a claim is checked by Gale’s own test system: nothing reaches a payer and no money moves.
  • Outreach — check-ins for patients who have drifted, drafted overnight for you to approve. Approving sends nothing yet; patient contact stays off until it opens.
  • Your panel, sorted so the patients who are due or slipping out of care come first — a sort order, not a prediction — with show rates and between-visit activity counted beside it.
  • Practice health — whether notes get signed and Good Faith Estimates go out on time.
  • Guidance monitoring — the between-visit guidance a patient chooses to share with you, with anything off track listed first. It fills as patients share.
  • Workbooks — your charts, claims, referral pipeline, compliance records and clinician roster as tables you can edit. New accounts start on a sample practice.
  • A desktop bridge and scheduled agents, for work that runs while you are away. A scheduled agent can never send a message, move money or sign anything.
The economics

During the transition, someone signs — and the signature is a cost line, in money or in kind. Independence retires it. What Gale adds is built to stay just as legible.

Gale’s side of the ledger is deliberately short. The software is free, and Gale earns one flat all-in fee on a transaction — charged only when your practice is actually paid, never as a subscription, never with per-feature line items, never a spread on your rate. The number itself lives in exactly one document, on purpose, so it can never quietly say two different things in two places: the Fee Schedule states it.
The playbook

The deepest state cluster we have built is California’s — eight guides on the 103/104 ladder, cited to the statute and the board’s own filings. They are California’s rules, not Colorado’s; the same treatment is coming state by state. Until then, they show the depth of homework to expect from us.

The California playbook →
Questions with citable answers
No. The clinical role is independent from day one — the mentorship gate applies only to prescribing. During the provisional period you prescribe within the mentorship; the mentor’s signed attestation converts provisional prescriptive authority to full authority through the Board of Nursing.
No. SB 23-167 — the same 2023 law that cut the mentorship to 750 hours — made it unlawful for a mentor to require payment or employment as a condition of the mentorship.
Yes. Provisional prescriptive authority expires if the 750-hour mentorship is not completed within 3 years of the grant.
Where to start

Your page may already exist

Gale publishes a public directory compiled from the NPPES registry. Find your listing, claim it, and see how you rank for your own name — that page is the front door your independent practice will be found through.

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