Opinion No. 20-2504
March 4, 1920
TO: Reverend Emile Barrat, Costilla, New Mexico.
Colorado Physicians Must Have Licenses to Practice Medicine in New Mexico.
OPINION
We are in receipt of your letter of the first instant making inquiry concerning the necessity to procure a license to practice medicine in this State by physicians who reside and practice just across the state line in the State of Colorado, and in reply shall advise as follows:
In our opinion, the statutes of the state require that every physician who practices medicine in the state shall procure a license before so doing. Anyone who does not comply with the law is subject to a fine and imprisonment.
We note that the exigencies of the situation at Costilla are such as would justify the calling of the Colorado physicians by residents of your town, in view of the fact that the nearest resident physician resides several miles away, but our statutes make no exception in such cases and of course this office cannot legislate upon the matter but must leave that to the proper governmental body upon which is imposed that duty by law.
If the Colorado physicians are graduates of medical colleges in good standing, that is, colleges which have a standard as high as that required by the Association of American Medical Colleges, and which have ample clinical facilities, or, if they have been regularly licensed physicians in the State of Colorado and Colorado has qualifications and requirements equivalent to those required in this State and reciprocates with New Mexico in the matter of admission of physicians to practice without examination, then the Colorado physicians may be admitted without taking the examination, and, in that manner will be able to comply with the requirements of the New Mexico laws in regard to the practice of medicine in this State.
From your letter I would assume that the physicians who are called from Costillo are men who would be eligible to admission to practice without taking the examination required of others.