Continuing Medical Education

Ongoing educational activities that healthcare providers complete to maintain their professional knowledge, licensure, and board certification throughout their career.

CME is the ongoing education you complete throughout your career to keep your medical knowledge current and maintain your professional licenses and certifications. Every state medical board requires a certain number of CME hours for license renewal, and most specialty boards require CME for maintenance of certification. Typical CME requirements range from 25 to 50 hours per license renewal cycle, which is usually every one to two years depending on your state. Some states have specific topic requirements. For example, several states require CME in opioid prescribing, pain management, cultural competency, domestic violence recognition, or medical ethics. CME comes in many formats: live conferences and workshops, online courses, journal-based learning, simulation-based training, quality improvement activities, and teaching. Not all formats count equally in every state. Some states limit the percentage of CME hours that can be earned online. Others require a minimum number of live hours. For credentialing, payers typically do not ask to see your CME records directly. But CME compliance is verified indirectly because your state license will not renew without adequate CME, and payers verify license status during credentialing and re-credentialing. If your license lapses because you did not complete CME, that will absolutely show up during credentialing. Track your CME meticulously. Keep certificates of completion for every course, including the date, number of credits, accrediting body, and topic. Store them digitally with your credentialing file. When license renewal time comes, you do not want to be scrambling to find certificates from a conference you attended two years ago. Some CME courses count for multiple purposes. An opioid prescribing course might satisfy your state's specific topic requirement, count toward your general CME hours, and fulfill a board certification maintenance requirement. Look for courses that provide maximum credential maintenance value per hour invested.