Starting a virtual clinic in New York: 2026 telehealth requirements

Yes. New York applies the patient-location rule without a telehealth exception. According to the Office of the Professions telepractice guidance summarized by CCHP, full licensure and current registration are required of any professional who practices in New York State, and licensure can be suspended or waived only under a Governor's executive order during a declared disaster emergency. Registration is a separate step from licensure in New York; a physician whose license is active but whose registration has lapsed is not authorized to practice. Public Health Law 2999-cc defines telemedicine as synchronous two-way audio-visual communication and excludes care delivered by fax or electronic messaging alone from the definition of telehealth.

New York is not a member of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact. For a multistate brand this is the main operational difference from neighbors like Pennsylvania or New Jersey: there is no expedited compact application, so physicians who are not already New York-licensed must go through the Office of the Professions' standard licensure process and then maintain biennial registration.

The only cross-state exception CCHP records for medicine is Education Law 6526(3), which permits occasional consultations by physicians licensed in their home state. CCHP characterizes this as a consultation provision, not a treatment provision, and a physician who regularly evaluates and prescribes for New York consumers would fall outside it. There is no telehealth registration, special purpose license or border exception.

For a brand's roster, this means New York coverage has to come from physicians, NPs and PAs who already hold New York licensure and registration. Intake routing must restrict New York patients to that pool, and expansion plans should budget for the standard New York application timeline rather than a compact timeline.

New York is a strict corporate practice of medicine state. The MedPath Compliance guide classifies it as strict, grounded in the Education Law, the Public Health Law and case law, and flags fee-splitting as a live restriction. The Permit Health guide describes New York as enforcing a strict prohibition that derives from the Education Law rather than a single explicit statute, and cites People v. Woodbury Dermatological Institute (1908), Stern v. Flynn (1936), Education Law 6522 and Public Health Law 2806. The result is that only licensed physicians may practice medicine, and only entities owned by licensed professionals, such as a professional service corporation or professional LLC, may deliver medical services.

The structure for a non-clinician brand is a management services organization owned by the brand and a New York professional entity owned entirely by New York-licensed physicians. The MSO provides the platform, intake, marketing, scheduling, billing support and non-clinical staff; the professional entity employs or contracts the clinicians and is the only party that renders care. The Permit Health guide notes that New York has specific rules on the type of management fee a professional corporation may pay an affiliated MSO, as well as strict naming rules for professional entities, so the management agreement and the entity name both need New York-specific review.

Fee-splitting is the second constraint. Because both guides flag fee-splitting rules in New York, a management fee calculated as a percentage of professional revenue is the structure most likely to draw scrutiny. Fixed fees or fees tied to measurable non-clinical services, set at fair market value, are the conservative approach. The MSO should not control clinical staffing, protocols or prescribing, and the physician owner's control of the professional entity must be substantive.

MyOrbitHealth operates under an MSO and friendly professional corporation model built for strict states like New York; New York counsel should still confirm the entity form, naming, management fee and ownership before launch.

AANP classifies New York as a full practice state, and the compliance dataset records the same as of May 2026. Under AANP's definition, that means New York law lets NPs evaluate patients, diagnose, order and interpret tests, and initiate and manage treatment including prescriptions under the exclusive licensure authority of the state board, without a career-long collaborative agreement.

For a telehealth brand, full practice authority in New York partly offsets the licensing friction created by the lack of IMLC membership: New York-licensed and registered NPs can run asynchronous reviews, video visits and renewals without a New York physician countersigning. A New York physician still needs to be on the roster for protocols beyond NP scope and for the physician-owned professional entity itself. NPs are also bound by the same controlled-substance evaluation rules in 10 CRR-NY 80.63 as physicians. The sources reviewed for this page do not state any transition-to-practice conditions; confirm current requirements with the Office of the Professions before onboarding newer NPs.