A nurse practitioner or clinical nurse specialist must practice at least 2,080 hours within a collaborative agreement with physicians or APRNs, then submits written evidence of completion to the Board of Nursing to practice independently. Since August 1, 2026 those hours no longer have to be earned in a hospital or integrated clinical setting for NPs in primary care or mental health; that setting requirement survives, in a new subd. 1d, only for NPs practicing outside those two fields.
Minnesota’s 2014 modernization law reserved its transition for NPs and clinical nurse specialists: 2,080 hours of practice within a collaborative agreement — with a physician or an APRN experienced with a similar population. Those hours once had to be earned in a hospital or integrated clinical setting where APRNs and physicians work side by side; the 2026 session struck that requirement for NPs in primary care and mental health, effective August 1, 2026, and kept it only for NPs practicing outside those two fields. Written evidence of completion goes to the Board of Nursing, and independent practice, prescribing included, follows. The statute states the requirement as hours, not a duration.
The transition
2,080 hours of practice within a collaborative agreement — in a hospital or integrated clinical setting only for NPs outside primary care and mental health
The moment it ends
Submission of written evidence to the Board of Nursing that the 2,080 collaborative-practice hours are complete (filed with the APRN application, or upon completing the hours)
The timeline
2014 APRN modernization law (2014 Minn. Laws ch. 235), effective Jan. 1, 2015; amended by 2026 Session Laws ch. 115 (HF 3825, signed May 27, 2026), art. 11, which struck the setting restriction for primary-care and mental-health NPs effective Aug. 1, 2026
Minnesota's 2014 law (effective Jan. 1, 2015) reserved its 2,080-hour transition for NPs and clinical nurse specialists only — CRNAs and nurse-midwives walked straight into full practice — and the hours must be earned where APRNs and physicians actually work side by side.
Full scope after the hours, including independent prescribing. During the transition, practice must occur within a collaborative agreement with a physician or another APRN experienced with a similar patient population. For NPs in primary care and mental health the hospital-or-integrated-clinical-setting requirement was struck effective August 1, 2026, so the hours may be earned in an independent practice; for NPs outside those fields it remains. The TTP applies only to NPs and clinical nurse specialists — nurse anesthetists and nurse-midwives are not subject to it.
The watch
Pending in Minnesota
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.
Nothing pending in Minnesota that we can pin to a primary source. What has already taken effect is below.
Landed recently (1)
Recently effective
Minnesota primary-care and mental-health NPs may now complete transition hours outside a hospital or integrated clinical setting.
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 Minnesota’s; the same treatment is coming state by state. Until then, they show the depth of homework to expect from us.
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.