Chiropractic Online Education Guidelines

Pennsylvania places no cap on distance education. Board policy allows chiropractors to meet the entire 24-hour requirement through distance learning.

The confusion has a source worth knowing. A rulemaking proposed in 2014 and submitted in final form in 2016 would have added Section 5.79 to Chapter 5, limiting distance education to 50 percent of the required hours. The Independent Regulatory Review Commission disapproved it, finding the rulemaking did not adequately protect public health, safety and welfare. Section 5.79 was never added to the Code — Subchapter G runs from 5.71 through 5.78.

One detail from that failed rule is still clarifying: it defined distance education as instruction where participant and instructor are separated by distance and time, and expressly excluded live interactive webinars in which participant and instructor can interact in real time. Pennsylvania has never treated a live webinar as self-study.

All health-related licensees who are mandatory reporters under the Child Protective Services Law must complete 2 hours of Board-approved training in child abuse recognition and reporting as a condition of biennial renewal. This applies to chiropractors and counts within your 24 hours.

This training must come from a provider approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services — a separate approval track from ordinary chiropractic CE. A general ethics or risk-management course will not satisfy it, and neither will an Act 31 course approved for a different state.

Plan this one first. It is the requirement most likely to be discovered late, and the pool of approved providers is narrower than for general CE. That leaves 22 hours to fill from the general catalog.

Pennsylvania chiropractic licenses expire September 1 of every even-numbered year. All 24 hours must fall within the immediately preceding two-year period.

The Board emails renewal notices roughly 60 days before expiration, to the most recent address you reported. Two practical consequences: if your email has changed and you did not update it with the Board, you will not receive the notice — and the Postal Service does not forward licenses, so a stale mailing address causes the same problem.

Build in a cushion. Course approval, certificate issuance, and your own processing time all sit between finishing a course and being able to attest to it.

Credit is calculated at one credit hour per 50 minutes of applicable instruction, excluding coffee breaks, lunches, and visits to exhibits.

Courses may be conducted or sponsored by an approved chiropractic college, or by an individual, association, or organization. Instructors must be faculty members of an approved chiropractic college, or certified by one as qualified to teach the course — a stricter faculty standard than most states apply.

Providers must apply for course approval at least 90 days before the scheduled program date, and a course may not be advertised as approved for Pennsylvania renewal before the Board issues that approval. If a course is promoted as Pennsylvania-approved, the approval should already exist — you can ask for the number.

You certify completion on a form supplied by the Board, listing course dates, credit hours claimed, course titles with a brief description of content, provider names and addresses, and course locations. Attendance certificates must be kept on file for four years.

A licensee who fails to satisfy the requirement without a waiver has the license classified as unregistered and may not practice until the requirement is met and registration renewed. Make-up hours do not also count toward the next biennial period — you complete two cycles' worth. Civil penalties apply, and a citation carries a six-month window to cure.

The Board may waive all or part of the requirement for emergency, illness, or undue hardship; the request goes in writing, and the Board may ask you to appear. A licensee whose license was inactive for an entire biennial period, and who did not practice in the Commonwealth during it, is not required to satisfy CE for that period.

Pennsylvania chiropractors must complete at least 24 hours of continuing chiropractic education within the two-year period immediately preceding biennial license renewal.

Yes. Board policy allows chiropractors to meet the entire continuing education requirement through distance education. A 2016 rulemaking that would have capped distance education at half the required hours was disapproved by the Independent Regulatory Review Commission and never took effect.

Pennsylvania chiropractic licenses expire September 1 of every even-numbered year, and all 24 hours must fall within the immediately preceding two-year period. The Board emails renewal notices approximately 60 days before expiration.

Two of the 24 hours must be Board-approved training in child abuse recognition and reporting, required of all health-related licensees who are mandatory reporters. The training must come from a provider approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, which is a separate approval track from ordinary chiropractic CE.

Attendance certificates must be maintained on file for four years. You certify completion on a Board-supplied form listing course dates, credit hours, titles and content descriptions, provider names and addresses, and course locations.