PMHNP Practice Authority in South Dakota: Independence, Physician Agreements and Schedule II

AANP's May 2026 map places South Dakota in its full practice tier, and AANP's November 2025 snapshot counts South Dakota among the FPA states with a time-in-practice requirement.

The label is AANP's advocacy classification; the legal fact behind it is SDCL 36-9A-12, which grants the certified nurse practitioner, within the CNP role and population focus, an advanced scope — advanced assessment, ordering and interpreting diagnostics, establishing primary and differential diagnoses, prescribing — with no supervising or delegating physician named in the section.

What stands between a new CNP and practicing without a collaborative agreement is not a delegation statute but the hours threshold covered below.

The exit from the collaborative agreement is administrative, not a certificate: a Practice Verification Form on file with the Board office verifying a minimum of 1,040 licensed practice hours within the role of a CNP.

Two limits of the sources read matter to a new graduate counting hours.

The 1,040-hour figure comes from the Board's page; the research could not locate the statutory section behind it (SDCL 36-9A-12.1 returns Not Found).

And who may be the collaborator during those 1,040 hours is not stated either — the administrative rule ARSD 20:62:03:08, Collaborative agreement, exists per search but was not read.

Confirm both with the Board before assuming a particular first job's hours will count.

SDCL 36-9A-13.1 puts the duty on every certified nurse practitioner to collaborate with other health care providers and to refer or transfer patients as appropriate.

The Board's page quotes SDCL 36-9A-1(6), which defines collaboration as “the act of communicating pertinent information or consulting with a licensed physician or other licensed health care provider with each provider contributing the provider's respective expertise to optimize the overall care delivered to the patient”; SDCL 36-9A-1 itself was not read.

That definition describes the act of collaboration, not the party to the collaborative agreement: neither text says who may serve as the collaborator during the 1,040 hours, and the sources contain no term of the agreement itself — no ratio, chart-review percentage, or meeting frequency.

A PMHNP choosing a first South Dakota job should ask the employer and the Board who may serve as the collaborator during the 1,040 hours rather than assume either way.

SDCL 36-9A-12(4)(b) authorizes CNPs to prescribe pharmacological agents including controlled drugs or substances listed on Schedule II in chapter 34-20B — the statute names Schedule II expressly, and no NP-specific Schedule II day-supply, quantity, or setting limit appears in the sources read.

An outpatient South Dakota PMHNP can therefore prescribe Schedule II ADHD stimulants; the Board's page confirms prescribing runs from licensure, within the CNP's licensed role and focus area.

To order controlled substances the Board requires registration with the federal DEA, the South Dakota Controlled Substance Registration (the page does not name the issuing agency), and the South Dakota Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.

The page also points to ARSD 20:62:03:11 for drug-sample documentation and guidelines for treating chronic, non-cancer pain, and describes state controlled-substance schedules II through IV in SDCL 34-20B.

A PMHNP registers with the DEA as a mid-level practitioner, and that registration covers only what South Dakota allows — here that works in the prescriber's favor, since the sources read show no state Schedule II limit for the DEA registration to run up against.

Telehealth has a state layer: the Board expects every provider serving patients located in South Dakota by telehealth to follow SDCL 34-52, which covers the provider-patient relationship, examination, prescribing, informed consent and medical records.

Federally, the DEA and HHS telemedicine flexibilities — extended through December 31, 2026 by the Fourth Temporary Extension — let registered practitioners prescribe Schedules II-V remotely without an in-person evaluation, but they lift no state rule.

South Dakota's legislature adopted the APRN Compact in 2024, per the Board's page.

The compact takes effect only when seven states enact it; the Board's page (updated 3/30/2026) counts four — Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota and Utah — and the research file's cross-state reading of the compact texts also found Wyoming's statute enacting it, making five of the seven needed as of September 2026.

No APRN holds a multistate APRN license today, and under the compact's own text a future one would require at least 2,080 hours of APRN practice.

The Nurse Licensure Compact is an RN compact and carries no nurse practitioner authority: a PMHNP moving to South Dakota needs a South Dakota CNP license on South Dakota's terms.

The one 2023–2026 change the research found for South Dakota is the 2024 APRN Compact adoption, which changes nothing for practice until a seventh state enacts.

The source notes on SDCL 36-9A-12 and SDCL 36-9A-13.1 show their most recent amendments in SL 2017, ch 171, and the Board's CNP Practice page was updated June 16, 2026 with no new practice-authority condition noted.

Because the 1,040-hour rule rests on a Board page whose statutory section was not located, re-check that page when you license — a rule that lives on a board page can move.