A new law that goes into effect today establishes a new “emeritus” license for Iowa physicians.
“The vision for this license is to keep physicians practicing in the state of Iowa who are kind of reaching the end of their career, to serve in teaching roles,” said Dr. Lillian Erdahl, an Iowa City surgeon who is president of the Iowa Medical Society.
To qualify for an emeritus license, an Iowa doctor must be at least 60 years old and Erdahl says they’ll primarily be teaching or supervising medical residents just starting their careers as doctors. “The state has worked to expand residency programs,” Erdahls says. “It’s a big committment that our state has made and I think health care organizations across our state are trying to meet that need, but finding enough physicians to then teach those additional residents was one potential challenge that we saw.”
In 2024, the Iowa Medical Society launched an initiative to expand slots for medical residencies at Iowa’s 13 teaching hospitals, where experienced doctors guide and oversee recent medical school graduates. State officials have secured tens of millions of federal dollars to support residencies, as research shows a majority of doctors wind up practicing in the state where they completed their residency.
Nearly 100 out of the 150 members of the Iowa House and Senate voted to established an emeritus license for doctors. Representative Austin Baeth, a doctor of internal medicine. was among the 33 legislators who voted against it. “We will be the only state in the country in which we have teaching faculty that are no longer required to undergo continuing medical education,” Baeth said.
Some other states offer faculty medical licenses, but Baeth said they require those doctors to keep up with continuing education requirements. “So for us to say that it’s OK that once you turn 60 and you want to keep teaching our newest doctors, our future doctors of Iowa, that you can stop learning medicine is misguided,” Baeth said.
Dr. Erdahl said the goal of this new license is to encourage physicians nearing retirement to serve as mentors or teachers of the next generation of doctors. “We engaged with quite a number of different people in talking about this and I think there was concensus or a majority among the groups that we talked to that it was reasonable to waive the continuing education for this late career teaching position,” Erdahl said, “and that it would not post a concern to any of them.”
Iowa has a shortage of physicians and Dr. Erdahl said the emeritus license is one of several steps to try to address the problem.