Editorial policy
How we compile and check the rules
How Start Your Practice sources each rule from statutes, board rules and agency pages, how we check it, and what the confidence and review dates mean.
Primary sources only
Every rule we publish comes from the text that creates it: a statute, a board rule, an agency page, a federal source or an official compact commission list. Each rule links to that source and names it in a citation.
Professional associations and published 50-state surveys are useful for checking our work, so we compare against them. We never copy their wording, tables or maps, and we never cite them as the source of a rule.
What a rule must have before we publish it
A rule appears on this site only when it has a citation, a secure link to the primary source, a value that matches the kind of rule it is, and a date showing when we last checked it against the source. That date must be within the previous 13 months.
When a comparison source disagrees with our reading of the primary source, a reviewer records why before the rule is published.
Topics we have not finished checking are labelled "not yet verified" and point you to the board or agency instead. We do not fill gaps with estimates.
Confidence
High confidence means the source states the rule in so many words. Medium confidence means the source needs interpretation, so read it before you rely on our summary. We do not publish rules we would rate lower than that.
When a rule changes
Rules change through new legislation, new board rules and new federal guidance. When we learn that a source behind a rule has changed, the rule is marked "change pending" until we have checked it again, and the previous version stays on record.
Guides and reviewers
Guides explain steps that are the same in every state. Each guide names its author and the licensed clinician who reviewed it, with the review date.
What this site is not
This site is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Start Your Practice does not verify licenses, does not check exclusion lists and does not credential providers. Boards, agencies and payers make their own decisions on their own timelines.
Citing our pages
You may cite any rule on this site with a link to the page where it appears. For anything you act on, cite the primary source as well.
The full list of sources is on the sources page.