Pennsylvania and Georgia are both substantial PA employers and neither has enacted the compact. Georgia adds a Schedule II prescribing restriction on top. For a PA whose practice includes either state, the compact changes nothing at all in 2027.
Two large markets, both outside the compact, for entirely different reasons — and one of them carries a second constraint.
Pennsylvania
A big state with major academic health systems, substantial rural health infrastructure, and a State Board of Medicine that publishes its fees cleanly at 49 Pa. Code 25.231. $135 to apply, which is mid-range and unremarkable.
What it does not have is compact membership. No privilege will reach Pennsylvania, and a Pennsylvania license will not qualify you for privileges anywhere else.
Georgia
Larger still by PA employment, also outside the compact, and additionally one of six states that withhold Schedule II authority from physician assistants.
So a Georgia license covers Georgia only, permanently, and comes with a prescribing gap that matters enormously in pain management, palliative care and psychiatry and barely at all in primary care or urgent care.
The regional pattern
Pennsylvania is worth looking at alongside New Jersey and New York, because all three are non-members. A PA working across the Philadelphia or New York metro areas — and many do — faces three full licenses, three renewal cycles on three unrelated anchors, and three sets of CME rules, with no relief coming.
Georgia’s neighbors are a different picture. Several southeastern states have joined, which means a PA in the region can build portability that stops precisely at the Georgia line.
What to actually do
If you practice in either state, hold the license and treat it as permanent infrastructure. There is no future mechanism that replaces it.
If portability matters to your career, add a member-state license alongside it. That license becomes the foundation privileges rest on, and it is worth far more than the state it nominally covers. Missouri at $28 is the cheapest qualifying door there is.
And if you are weighing where to add a second license generally, a member state beats a non-member state of equal convenience every time, because it does double duty from 2027.
Will either join?
Both would take legislation, and both are plausible eventually. Membership has grown from seven states to twenty-nine in two years, so the list genuinely moves.
It moves through state legislatures though, one bill at a time, with delayed effective dates and implementation periods after that. Any news about either will come out of Harrisburg or Atlanta, not from the Commission, and it will come with plenty of warning.
Common questions
- Is Pennsylvania in the PA compact?
- No. Pennsylvania has not enacted the PA Licensure Compact, so no privilege will reach it and a Pennsylvania license will not support privileges elsewhere.
- How much is a Pennsylvania PA license?
- The application fee is $135, set at 49 Pa. Code 25.231 in the State Board of Medicine’s schedule of fees.
- Can Georgia PAs prescribe Schedule II?
- No. Georgia withholds Schedule II from physician assistant prescriptive authority, alongside Alabama, Arkansas, Hawaii, Iowa and West Virginia.
- What should I do if I work in a non-member state?
- Hold a license in a member state as well if portability matters. Missouri at $28 or Illinois at $50 are inexpensive foundations, though only Missouri is a member.
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