Pennsylvania Licensure Renewal CME Requirements

MD Requirements
DO Requirements

MD Requirements

For the licensure renewal period beginning January 1, 2005, proof of completion of 25 credit hours of continuing medical education in the preceding biennial period running January 1, 2003, through December 31, 2004, is required. The 25 credit hours for the January 1, 2005, license renewal period may be completed in either AMA PRA Category 1 or AMA PRA Category 2 and must include 3 hours of patient safety and risk management.

Full implementation of the continuing education requirement has been delayed until the licensure renewal period beginning January 1, 2007. At that time, proof of completion of 100 credit hours of continuing medical education in the preceding biennial period running January 1, 2005, through December 31, 2006, will be required for licensure renewal for medical doctors.

The final regulations state that to renew a medical license, a physician will need:

• 100 total credit hours of CME in the two-year license cycle
• A minimum of 20 of the total credit hours in Category 1
• 12 credit hours in the areas of patient safety or risk management (either Category 1 or Category 2)

Back to top

DO Requirements

The State Board of Osteopathic Medicine, which had CME requirements as a condition of licensure renewal prior to passage of the MCare Act, will continue its existing CME requirements for licenses expiring October 31, 2004. New CME regulations, which include patient safety and risk management, have not yet been published but will be very similar to the final regulations of the State Board of Medicine, and will be effective for the next renewal period.

CME activities that qualify as patient safety or risk management

The State Board of Medicine has approved the following list of topics that will satisfy the patient safety/risk management requirement:

• Mortality/morbidity conferences
• Improving communication among physicians and with other health care personnel
• Communication between physicians and patients
• Medical team building
• Human error factors
• Theory of error reduction
• Medical error identification/avoidance strategies
• Technology and information systems to improve practice
• Preventive medicine education
• Improving medical records systems
• Evidence-based care (includes programs such as teaching techniques documented medical efficacy or avoiding commonly used interventions that are not beneficial as documented by outcome studies)
• Patient health monitoring methodologies
• Health care quality improvement
• Medication safety

As long as the CME activity falls within these topics, you can count it toward the patient safety/risk management requirement. The course does not have to state, and very likely may not, that it is a patient safety or risk management course.