Check the person and the pharmacy.

Start with the person’s full name

Ask whether the person who would assess you is a doctor, nurse practitioner, physician assistant, or another health professional.

State medical boards license doctors and keep public records of licenses, formal accusations of breaking the rules, and penalties.

The Federation of State Medical Boards maintains a directory with links to the websites of individual state boards.

Get the person’s full name and job. Use the board for that profession and for your location when you receive care.

For a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant, find out the name of the state board that issued the license.

Check permission in your location

HHS is short for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

As of September 2026, HHS guidance requires health professionals to hold a license or other permission to practice in their patient’s state at the time.

A license displayed for another state leaves this question open. Ask about the permission that applies to your visit.

Find the actual medicine source

Reviewing medicines is work the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does for the U.S. government.

Pharmacies have separate state licensing boards; FDA links to their public license searches.

Ask which pharmacy would prepare your medicine or send it to you, and get that pharmacy’s name. Use its full name in the state board’s search, rather than relying on the online program’s logo.

A pharmacy license does not prove that every medicine it gives out is right for the person receiving it.

Read the result with its limits

A clean public record means the board shows no public case or penalty against the doctor. It gives no measure of the quality of that doctor’s care.

Before deciding, get an explanation from the service for any mismatch in a name or record. Keep the record and the service’s answer together.