The NCCAOM (National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) has changed the way diplomates report their acupuncture continuing education credits. The new system was implemented by the NCCAOM in November of 2018. The NCCAOM no longer accepts certificates by email.
Licensed acupuncturists that are diplomates are now required to use the NCCAOM portal located on the NCCAOM website for diplomate renewal every four years. This applies to all diplomates: Diplomate of Acupuncture (Dipl. Ac.), Diplomate in Oriental Medicine (Dipl. O.M.), Diplomate in Chinese Herbology (Dipl. C.H.).
We will review how the certificate upload process works. This will facilitate using the new system set up by the NCCAOM for PDA certificate reporting. A PDA is a professional development activity and is equivalent to the term CEU (continuing education unit). All HealthCMi (Healthcare Medicine Institute) courses are certified by the NCCAOM and HealthCMi is an approved NCCAOM provider (#602).
Course numbers are located on all certificates at the bottom right portion and read: 602-xxx. The x’s are the specific course number, 602 is the HealthCMi provider number, and the full number is used in the NCCAOM certification portal. Add "PDA" to the number sequence, it will look like this: PDA-602-xxx (this is the full number the NCCAOM portal will accept). For courses #1–99, if the course number does not input into the system, try stripping out any preceeding zeros in the last three digits. For example, course “PDA-602-001” may need to be entered as “PDA-602-1”. The NCCAOM is working to fix this issue and is updating the courses to include the zeros (which were in the original course number issued by the NCCAOM). The new NCCAOM Certification Portal was launched in November of 2018 and they are working to fix issues with their new system.
We have contacted the NCCAOM to see if they can accept the numerical part of the course number without the letters “PDA”. They are looking into it and this may be an option for the future. For now, add PDA to the numerical sequence. The alphanumeric designation is the full course number. Select AOM-BIO, Safety, Ethics, or CPR as the course category and enter the full course number (e.g., PDA-602-xxx).
In the future, the course categories will change. Prior to November of 2018, AOM-BIO was the only category in the NCCAOM system for core PDA/CEU credit. This is changing. As PDA providers update existing courses and submit new courses, the AOM-BIO category will be just one of several core categories. We will provide continuing updates to changes and fixes made by the NCCAOM on the HealthCMi support page:
Core category courses are required in addition to safety, ethics, and CPR category courses. The new official NCCAOM term for core categories is: Core Acupuncture & Oriental Medicine (AOM). The new categories include the following:
- AOM-OM Oriental Medicine Foundation & Theory
- AOM-AC Acupuncture
- AOM-CH Chinese Herbology
- AOM-BIO Biomedicine
During the transition period, since all courses are AOM-BIO because it was the only category that existed prior to November of 2018, use the AOM-BIO category when uploading certificates to the NCCAOM online portal. In the future, many courses will be updated to conform to the new NCCAOM categories.
At HealthCMi, we have contacted the NCCAOM and have recommended that both the legacy AOM-BIO category and any new category designation should be accepted by the NCCAOM online certification portal to simplify acupuncture license renewal during the transition period. This capability will allow both older and newer certificates to work seamlessly in the NCCAOM portal. The NCCAOM will get back to us after consulting with developers. We will update the HealthCMi support page if this change is implemented.
The NCCAOM will be releasing a short instructional videos on how to use the new certificate reporting system. This should facilitate use and answer most questions.
In related news, the NCCAOM is changing their appearance; the NCCAOM is changing their logo. The blue diamond logo will be replaced by two circular logos. One logo is a PDA provider badge, used for identifying approved providers. The other is used on certificates for completed courses and is called a PDA activity logo. We will implement the new logos once released to PDA providers for public use. In addition, the font used for NCCAOM has been changed. It uses a color gradient font of blue and green. That is all of the updates, we hope you find this information helpful for your license renewal process.
