The bar to get on the list

What a professional has to clear before assessing anybody

Anyone can put a photograph and a set of initials on a website. What matters is whether the credential behind them was checked against the body that issued it, whether it covers the state you live in, and whether anybody looks at it again after the first day.

What we hold on file for every clinician

Each credential is a separate record, not a line of free text.

One credential record
Licence type The category of the credential itself, since what a professional may do is defined by the kind of licence they hold rather than by a job title they chose.
Issuing state Recorded as its own field, which is what lets your assessment reach a professional licensed in your own state rather than somewhere convenient.
Licence number The identifier the issuing board uses. It is what allows anyone receiving your paperwork to look the professional up independently of anything we say about them.
Expiry date Held so a credential can lapse in our records rather than quietly staying valid on a page forever. A licence that has run out is not a licence.
Primary or additional A professional may hold several. One is marked primary, and the rest sit alongside it as equals for the states they cover.

What happens before anyone is added

Five checks, all of them before a single case is routed.

The credential is verified at source Against the board that issued it rather than against a scan the applicant supplied. A document can be produced by anybody; a register entry cannot.
Standing is confirmed, not just existence A licence that exists and a licence in good standing are different facts, and only the second one is any use to the person relying on it.
Scope is matched to the work Being licensed is not the same as being licensed to do this. The credential has to cover the kind of assessment we would actually be asking for.
Every state is recorded separately A professional practising across several jurisdictions gets a row for each, with its own number and its own expiry, rather than one entry with a list in it.
Nothing is routed until it is complete An incomplete record is not a provisional one. Until the credential is on file and verified, no case reaches that person at all.

The part almost nobody else does

Plenty of services have licensed professionals. Far fewer track which licence applies to which client, and that is what separates a credential that impresses from a credential that helps.

Where somebody holds licences in four states, your paperwork is issued under whichever one is valid at your own address. The number printed on it, the state named beside it and the letterhead it appears on all follow that choice rather than defaulting to wherever the professional happens to be sitting.

This is invisible when everything goes smoothly and decisive when it does not. A housing provider who looks up the credential finds a professional authorised where the property is, which is the question they were actually asking.

It is also the failure mode we see most often in documents produced elsewhere: a perfectly genuine professional, perfectly genuinely licensed, three states away from the person they assessed.

What keeps being checked

Vetting somebody once and never looking again is not vetting.

Expiry dates Held as data rather than as a note somebody meant to follow up. A credential approaching its end is visible before it becomes a problem in somebody's paperwork.
Coverage changes Professionals add states and let others lapse. The record moves with them, so routing follows the credentials they actually hold today.
The work itself Assessments are reviewed internally. A pattern that looks like a rubber stamp is a problem for us long before it becomes a problem for a client.
Access rights Sign-in is protected by a second factor and sessions expire. Clinical files are not reachable by somebody who once had a password.
What appears on paper The credential block printed on a document is generated from the verified record, not typed in by hand where a digit can drift.
Departures When somebody leaves the network their access ends with the relationship. Documents already issued remain valid and remain verifiable.

Checking us rather than trusting us

Everything above is a claim, and claims are what every website in this field makes. The reason we print the licence number and its issuing state on your paperwork is that it converts our claim into something you can settle yourself in about two minutes.

Every state publishes a register of the professionals it has licensed. Take the number from the document, look it up on the board's own site, and you have verified the credential without involving us at any point in the process.

We would encourage you to do exactly that, and to do it with any provider you are considering. A service unwilling to put a checkable number on the document has made a decision about what it wants you to be able to confirm.

Questions about credentials

Can I see who will be assessing me beforehand?
You will know who conducted the assessment, and their credential appears on anything issued to you. Allocation depends on which professionals are licensed for your state and available in the window you want.
How do I verify the licence myself?
Take the number and the state from the credential block on your document and search the issuing board's public register. It is a free lookup and it does not go through us.
What if the professional is licensed somewhere else as well?
That is common and it is fine. What matters is that the credential appearing on your paperwork is valid where you live, which is how the record is built to work.
Does my letter stop working if they leave?
No. An assessment was validly conducted by a validly credentialed professional at the time, and that does not unwind. The document remains verifiable through the same check as any other.

Assessments that end in no

What follows when a professional declines, and why the possibility of that is the whole point.

How a document proves itself

The reference, the code and the credential block, and what a checker can and cannot see.

The clinicians themselves

The professionals currently in the network, rather than the standard they had to clear.

Information we refuse to gather

The two matters a professional settles, and everything deliberately left off the form.