College mental health providers can now serve students across state lines via telehealth
H.R. 5357 — College Students Continuation of Mental Health Care Act of 2025 · Filed by Mike Flood (R-NE) · 20 cosponsors · Introduced Sep 15, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill allows college mental health providers licensed in their home state to deliver telehealth mental health services to students across state lines without obtaining separate licenses in each student's state, provided the provider is not affirmatively excluded from practice there. Students must consent, verify their identity, and confirm contact methods; providers must stay within their home-state scope of practice and cannot offer services prohibited by the student's state.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is removing licensing barriers to expand telehealth mental health services for college students. It is a straightforward public-health measure designed to increase access to care, not a regulatory carve-out or narrow beneficiary provision.
What the text implies
- Interstate compacts authorized under subsection (d) could eventually create a patchwork of state-level agreements that fragment rather than unify telehealth licensing standards, potentially creating confusion about which providers can serve which students.
- The 3-month lookback window for 'covered students' (subsection e(2)(B)) may allow providers to serve students who have minimal ongoing connection to the institution, potentially extending services beyond the institution's oversight.
- Malpractice insurance treatment under subsection (c) assumes providers' existing coverage extends to interstate telehealth; gaps in coverage or insurer refusal could leave providers and students unprotected despite the bill's authorization.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
College students, particularly those in rural or underserved areas, gain access to mental health care from their institution's providers without geographic barriers. The bill includes safeguards (identity verification, informed consent, scope-of-practice limits) to protect students while reducing administrative burden on providers and institutions.
Who stands to gain
- institutions of higher education (reduced licensing compliance costs)
- college mental health providers (expanded service territory without multi-state licensing burden)
Named in the bill
institutions of higher education, college mental health providers, states, District of Columbia, Higher Education Act of 1965
Where it stands
20 cosponsors: 11 Democrats, 9 Republicans.
- Sep 15, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Sep 15, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on Education and Workforce and House Committee on Energy and Commerce · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Education and…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $30,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 56 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Mike Flood, the sponsor, reported $1,190,756 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- National Alliance on Mental Illness — $20,000 on 1 filing
- American College Health Association — $10,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (4,895 characters) on May 21, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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