The 24 months still stand — with a sunset written.
A certified nurse practitioner must first complete a supervised transition — 24 months under a licensed physician or supervising NP, or employment in a clinic/hospital with a physician medical director — a gate that PL 2025, c. 540 keeps in force until the Board of Nursing adopts replacement mentorship-based practice standards.
Maine’s gate is still up. A certified nurse practitioner completes 24 months of supervised practice — under a physician or a supervising NP, or in a clinic or hospital with a physician medical director — before practicing independently.
In February 2026 the legislature unanimously passed emergency law LD 961 to sunset that rule, but the sunset is conditional: it takes effect only when the Board of Nursing adopts replacement mentorship-based practice standards, and as of August 2026 no such standards have been adopted. Until the board acts, the 24-month requirement operates exactly as before.
The transition
24 months of supervised practice (remains until board-adopted practice standards replace it)
The moment it ends
submission of written evidence to the board upon completion of the required clinical experience
The timeline
24-month rule long-standing; PL 2025, c. 540 (LD 961) emergency-enacted and signed February 17, 2026
In February 2026 Maine unanimously passed emergency law LD 961 (PL c. 540) to sunset the 24-month physician-supervision rule — but only once the Board of Nursing adopts new NP-mentorship practice standards, which it was barred from adopting before May 1, 2026.
32 M.R.S. § 2102(2-A); § 2205-B(4-A) (as amended/enacted by PL 2025, c. 540)
Scope and carve-outs
The grant and the strings, at equal weight
After the transition, full APRN scope; the supervision gate applies only to certified nurse practitioners — Maine's other three APRN categories (CNM, CNS, CRNA) have never been subject to it.
The watch
Pending in Maine
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.
Rulemaking in progress
Maine is finalizing rules that would replace its fixed 24-month supervision requirement with board-set mentorship standards.
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 Maine’s; the same treatment is coming state by state. Until then, they show the depth of homework to expect from us.
Not yet, in effect. LD 961 (PL 2025, c. 540) was emergency-enacted in February 2026, but it sunsets the 24-month rule only once the Board of Nursing adopts new mentorship-based practice standards — and the board, which could not adopt them before May 1, 2026, has not adopted them as of August 2026. The 24-month gate still operates.
Probably not entirely. The same law directs the board to adopt standards addressing length of practice and mentorship time, so some transition requirement is likely to persist in the replacement rules. What changes is the shape — mentorship-based standards instead of the current supervision requirement.
No — only to certified nurse practitioners. Maine’s other three APRN categories (CNM, CNS, CRNA) have never been subject to it.
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.