Arkansas is a PA Compact member that does not extend Schedule II authority to physician assistants, and its regulations delegate the fee amount to the board rather than publishing it. So you get a license that will travel under the compact, attached to a prescribing scope that will not.
Two facts about Arkansas that people tend to learn separately, and should learn together.
A license that travels
Arkansas enacted the PA Licensure Compact. That makes an Arkansas license a qualifying license — once privileges open, it supports applications into every other member state, and it will keep doing so as membership grows.
For a PA choosing where to hold a second license, that is genuinely valuable. A member-state license is worth more than a non-member license of equal convenience, because it does double duty.
A scope that does not
Arkansas does not extend Schedule II prescribing to physician assistants. It is one of six states in that position, and it is the one most likely to surprise someone, because compact membership reads as modernization and people assume scope liberalization travels with it.
It does not. Compacts govern authority to practice. Scope of practice is a separate policy question decided state by state, and the two move on completely independent tracks.
Why the fee is hard to find
Arkansas regulations reference "the required fee ... as delineated elsewhere" rather than naming an amount. That is the delegated model: the legislature or the rule sets a framework, and the board publishes a schedule it can revise without going through rulemaking.
It is administratively sensible and genuinely inconvenient for anyone budgeting. There is no authoritative published number to cite, only a current schedule that can move. Anyone quoting you a confident Arkansas figure from an aggregator is quoting a guess.
Budgeting without a published number
Call the board, or have someone call on your behalf, and get the current schedule in writing before you commit to a timeline. Then add the costs that are never in the board’s schedule at all: fingerprinting through the state vendor, NCCPA verification, primary source verification of every prior license, and transcript fees from your program.
Those ancillary costs are frequently larger than the application fee itself, in Arkansas and everywhere else. A PA who budgets only the board fee is usually budgeting for a minority of the total.
How the two facts interact
If you are adding Arkansas as a compact-qualifying license and will not practice there day to day, the Schedule II limitation costs you nothing. The license does its job.
If Arkansas is where you actually work, the limitation is a daily consideration in some specialties and invisible in others — the same calculus as Alabama, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa and West Virginia.
And if you are moving to Arkansas from a state where you had full prescriptive authority, that is a real change to how your day works. Worth knowing before you accept, not after.
Common questions
- Is Arkansas in the PA Licensure Compact?
- Yes. Arkansas enacted the compact, so an Arkansas license will support privileges in other member states once the Commission opens applications.
- Can Arkansas PAs prescribe Schedule II?
- No. Arkansas is one of six states that withhold Schedule II from physician assistant prescriptive authority. Schedules III through V are available.
- What does an Arkansas PA license cost?
- The regulations say only "the required fee as delineated elsewhere," so the amount is set by board schedule rather than rule. Confirm the current figure with the board before budgeting.
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