Maryland has about 6.3 million residents. Registered nurses average $99,010 a year, 17th among the fifty states and the District of Columbia.
Licensure
The Maryland Board of Nursing licenses registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and advanced practice registered nurses. Its office is on Patterson Avenue in Baltimore, telephone (410) 585-1900. Rules, applications and license verification are at health.maryland.gov/mbon.
Maryland was one of the first states to implement the Nurse Licensure Compact, in 1999. A nurse living in Maryland holds one multistate license good in every other compact state, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia included.
The District of Columbia is not a member, so a Maryland nurse taking work in a Washington hospital needs a separate D.C. license obtained by endorsement. Given how many people cross that line daily, it is the most consequential gap in the compact map for any single metropolitan area.
Nurse practitioner practice
Maryland is a full practice state. Nurse practitioners evaluate patients, order and interpret tests, and prescribe under the nursing board's authority, with no physician agreement required. See nurse practitioner practice authority.
Nursing education
The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing is one of the leading nursing research schools in the country. The University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore is among the oldest and largest in the United States, tracing its teaching to the 1880s. Coppin State University's Helene Fuld School of Nursing is a long established historically Black program, Towson and Salisbury run further public baccalaureate programs, and the community colleges supply associate degree graduates.
How Maryland pays its hospitals
Maryland is the only state that sets hospital rates for all payers rather than leaving Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers to negotiate separately. Every payer is charged the same rate for the same service at the same hospital, under a federal waiver that has run in some form since the 1970s and now operates as a global budget for each hospital.
It matters to nursing because it changes what a hospital gains from admitting more patients. A hospital paid a fixed annual budget has no revenue reason to fill beds, and a financial reason to keep people out of them, which pushes money toward care coordination, discharge planning and community health roles rather than toward inpatient volume.
Pay and workforce
Baltimore holds the densest concentration of hospital and research nursing in the state. Johns Hopkins Hospital, the University of Maryland Medical Center and MedStar's Baltimore hospitals are all there.
The Washington suburbs in Montgomery and Prince George's counties form a second market, with the National Institutes of Health clinical center in Bethesda and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center giving Maryland a federal employer no other state has at that scale. A nurse at a federal facility may hold a license from any state, which sidesteps the licensing question entirely.
Western Maryland and the Eastern Shore are rural by comparison and depend on smaller regional hospitals. Maryland has no critical access hospitals, one of five states with none.
Notable nurses
Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, spent her last years at Glen Echo in Montgomery County and died there in 1912. The house is now a national historic site.
Related
- Nurse Licensure Compact
- Licensure by endorsement
- Nurse practitioner practice authority
- Nursing in the District of Columbia
- Nursing by state
Sources
- U.S. Census Bureau, state population estimates for July 1, 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, registered nurses (29-1141), May 2025. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Maryland Board of Nursing, contact details and licensing information. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission, on the all payer rate setting system and global budgets. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Nurse Licensure Compact, member states. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- Critical Access Hospital locations list. Flex Monitoring Team. Accessed September 8, 2026.
- American Association of Nurse Practitioners, State Practice Environment. Accessed September 8, 2026.