The California Medical Board has a reputation for being one of the most difficult State Medical Boards in which to obtain a license. There is good cause for this but I believe that this reputation is overstated. First we will cover the process of licensing with the Medical Board of California.

The California Medical Board requires that each Physician submit a set of Fingerprint cards or travel to California to participate in the LiveScan process. MedLicense.com highly recommends that the Physician travel to California to complete the LiveScan process instead of submitting Fingerprint Cards. Why? Fingerprint cards take 2 to 4 months to process. The license will not be issued until the report is returned to the Medical Board of California by the FBI. 10 to 25% of the Cards are rejected by the FBI because the prints are smudged, low quality, or indistinguishable. If this happens then new cards have to be submitted and the process is extended another 2 to 4 months. However with the LiveScan process, the report is returned to the Medical Board of California 3 days after the Scan takes place. We have handled 450 California Applications since 2003 and not one has been rejected or required to be re-submitted. 

Once the application is submitted to the Board and the Verifications have been requested, the Doctor can only wait until 45 to 60 business days have passed before contacting the State Board. The Medical Board of California has a strict policy against contacting the Board prior to this waiting period. With most of our physicians once a reviewer is assigned to the application, then the license is issued 5 to 10 days later. In the event that a verification is rejected , lost (by the USPS or Medical Board of California) while in transit, or never received by the Medical Board of California then a letter is sent to the Doctor detailing what items are still needed. The majority of our clients are complete at first review and thus receive the license 5 to 10 days later. The exception to this rule are Foreign Trained Doctors who completed Clinical Clerkships in the USA during their fourth or fifth year. Each Clinical Clerkship has to be verified by the Department of the Clerkship. Most hospitals do not have records of these clerkship and thus the process is considerably delayed by the California requirement. 

The real con to the Medical Board of California's licensure process is there is a lack of recourse when it comes to the decisions of the Boards. It seems that the Board has the ability to reject/deny an application based solely on the opinion of the reviewer for any negative found in the Doctor's file. Typically no hearing is required and the rejection can be arbitrary. Once a rejection is issued there seems to be little or no recourse to remedy the problem in the courts. If a Physician has a clean history, the California will be a smooth process with licensure times that rank among the fastest in the Nation. If there are negatives in the Physician's background then the process will be extended and could be problematic.

Links:

Medical Board of California  - Telemedicine / Teleradiology Law