Med school taught you how to manage a crashing patient. It did not teach you how to fill out a CAQH profile. Somehow the second one is what’s standing between you and your first paycheck as an attending.

Credentialing is the least glamorous part of becoming a practicing physician, and it’s also the part with the longest lead time — some of these processes take 60 to 120 days, which means the checklist below needs to start well before your last day of training, not after it.

CAQH: the database everyone checks and nobody explains

CAQH ProView is the universal profile most insurers pull from when they credential you into their networks. If you haven’t built or claimed your profile yet, do it now — insurers can’t begin their side of the process until it’s complete and attested.

A few specifics that trip people up:

• Education verification isn’t automatic. CAQH doesn’t independently confirm your med school or residency for you; you’re responsible for entering it accurately and it gets primary-source verified later in the process. Have your program’s graduation date and any residency completion certificate on hand.
• Attestation expires. CAQH requires you to re-attest your profile periodically (typically every 120 days) even with no changes. An expired attestation can quietly stall a credentialing application that was otherwise moving.
• One profile, many payers. You maintain it once; individual insurers pull from it rather than each requiring a separate intake from scratch. That said, “pulling from CAQH” doesn’t mean instant — each payer still runs its own internal review timeline on top of it.

DEA registration: the address problem nobody warns you about

Your DEA registration is tied to a specific practice location, which is straightforward if you’re walking into a single employed position — and genuinely confusing if you’re doing locum tenens, telehealth across states, or haven’t finalized a start address yet.

A few things worth knowing before you apply:

• You generally need a specific registered address to complete the application — a P.O. box or “TBD” won’t work. If you’re locum-bound and don’t have one fixed location, look into whether your locum agency handles DEA registration/reimbursement as part of onboarding; many do.
• If you’ll be practicing in multiple states, you may need a DEA registration in each state where you’ll be prescribing controlled substances, not just one national registration — this is a common point of confusion for physicians assuming DEA credentials travel automatically with them.
• Processing has historically run several weeks to a couple of months. Apply as soon as you have a firm practice address, not after you’ve already accepted your start date.

State medical licensure: start earlier than feels necessary

If you’re staying in the state where you trained, this is usually the most familiar part of the process. If you’re moving states for your first attending job, treat this as the long pole in your credentialing tent — some state boards take several months from application to issued license, especially if they require primary-source verification of every step of your training.

Practical notes:

• Every state board has its own application, its own required documentation, and its own timeline — there’s no substitute for reading your specific state board’s checklist directly rather than assuming it mirrors a state you’re familiar with.
• Some states offer expedited or reciprocal pathways for physicians already licensed elsewhere. Worth checking before you assume you’re starting from zero.
• Malpractice insurance, hospital privileging, and payer credentialing often can’t begin in earnest until your state license is active — so a delay here has downstream effects on everything else.

Insurance/payer credentialing: yes, they may contact your residency program

This is the step that runs longest and feels most opaque, because it’s largely happening behind the scenes at each individual payer. A few things to expect:

• Insurers verify your training history directly with your residency program as part of primary-source verification — so it’s worth giving your program coordinator a heads-up that verification requests may be coming, and confirming who at the program handles them.
• Timelines vary widely by payer, but 90 days is a reasonable planning assumption, not a worst case. If your start date is closer than that, ask your new employer’s credentialing team directly where things stand rather than assuming it’s handled.
• Until you’re fully credentialed with a given payer, you may not be able to bill under your own name for patients covered by that plan — ask your employer how they handle the gap (supervising physician billing, delayed start on certain payer panels, etc.) so it isn’t a surprise.

The timeline that actually works

Start CAQH and your state license application the moment you have a confirmed practice location — ideally 4-6 months out. Apply for DEA registration as soon as that address is final. Loop in your residency program coordinator early so verification requests don’t stall in someone’s inbox. And ask your new employer’s credentialing or HR contact for their internal timeline rather than guessing — they’ve done this before, even if you haven’t.

None of this is complicated. It’s just slow, paperwork-heavy, and starts earlier than intuition suggests. Start earlier than intuition suggests.