Applying for CEU Approval
Applications for Prior CEU Approval will be received from the vendor, the sponsoring
organization. A vendor is the entity responsible for advertising, marketing, and
sales, of a product or event.
Select an application according to the media of presentation:
- Live or Recorded Live, Seminars, Workshops,
Audios, Courses and Post-Secondary School Courses
- Educational Publications and Book-Based
Self Study Courses
- Online Education (curriculum that
builds methodically, brick upon brick, to tell a larger story)
- Newsletters and Magazines (comprised
of numerous topics, advertisements, non-coding tidbits like surveys, interspersed
with the articles; delivered via hard copy, email or web).
The first three pages of the document are informational and outline the requirements
for prior approval. The fourth page of the document is the business page. The business
page is numbered page one of the application form. On this page you will select
the type of application you are submitting. You will choose from:
- Regular (application with payment)
- In-service (employee-to-employee training; monies not exchanged at any level of
participation)
- PMCC (current license owned by the sponsoring organization)
- Marketing Contract (current contract with AAPC)
- Instructor at a Post-Secondary School (CEUs are for the instructor only.)
The business page requests basic information about the sponsoring organization,
the application contact, and the presenter(s). If your application requires payment
you may enter credit card information on this page. Be assured, the AAPC site is
a secure site. Applications paid with a check should be mailed together to AAPC.
All others may be faxed or emailed.
The next pages will ask you to choose the exact type of presentation or product.
These pages also contain the most recent guidelines for the media you are applying
under. You will be advised as to the required documents and or products to submit
with your application. The last portion of the Live or Recorded Live and the Online
application forms request information that will be entered into AAPC database to
be used in a search tool for members seeking specific CEUs. Members will soon have
the ability to search for events based on their geographic location, specialty,
level of expertise, and media type.
A complete application must be received 21-30 days prior to marketing or first event
date. Incomplete applications received 21 days or less, prior to the marketing or
event date, will be charged a $50.00 late submission fee. Once the application is
made complete it will be placed into a two week review cycle. If the marketing or
event date is within the two week review cycle, a $50.00 fee will be charged to
fast track the application. The approval is valid for 12 months. The event may be
repeated during the year.
Upon approval you will be emailed a letter of approval and a PDF certificate displaying
the title of your event and a unique index number with a specified CEU value. If
your request is for a multi-specialty conference with breakout sessions, you will
be emailed a CEU Code Card in place of the PDF Certificate. Please give all attendees
a copy of the original PDF certificate or CEU Code Card sent to you by AAPC. These
are the only documents AAPC will accept from a member for CEUs. The documents are
not to be altered, other than adding the name of the attendee, the date of the course,
and the approved index number if it is not recorded. The CEU Code Card may also
require session titles and specialty assignments be added.
Please feel free to contact us at 800-626-2633 ext 115 with any concerns. Your ideas
and suggestions are welcome and appreciated.
AAPC grants prior approval for continuing education programs based on the relevance
of the program content to the medical coding, reimbursement, compliance, and billing
profession. Become one of hundreds of businesses and organizations that proudly
promote their AAPC Approved Vendor
Status showing their education has been scrutinized and given prior approval
by AAPC. Being recognized as an approved vendor with AAPC is a privilege that has
been extended to vendors who have proven they will bring valuable continuing education
to our members and the coding community.
Guidelines
for CEU Approval
AAPC will not award CEUs for publications or software considered to be a tool that
a coder would or could use at his/her desk to perform his/her responsibilities.
Examples would be CPT®, ICD-9 or HCPCS Level II desk reference books, medical
dictionaries and software containing reference material.
In-Service Approvals
Applying for regularly scheduled recurring in-service? AAPC will give a “block”
of approved index numbers with a single application.
This was designed with the knowledge that a company does not always know the topic,
the presenter, or sometimes even the date of the in-service 30 days in advance.
In-services are meant to meet today’s need today. Please specify the dates
of the trainings you would like CEU credit for. Please provide a list of all possible
presenters and their credentials.
Educational Publications
(Textbooks, Newsletters/Magazines, PDF or Online)
Qualifying curriculum within educational publications includes narrative, illustrations,
and graphs or charts. Excluded from word/page count are indexes, reference material
and educational exercises (puzzles, quizzes, or other work). A copy of the publication
and post-test are required for CEU assignment and to ensure the written curriculum
has been completed; CEUs are not awarded for these tests and rationales are not
required. The test must follow AAPC test guidelines.
The following guideline is used to calculate CEUs for Educational Publications and
Self Study Guides*:
- 50 pages of quality curriculum plus a post-test of 10 questions equals 1 CEU
- 100 pages of quality curriculum plus a post-test of 20 questions equals 2 CEUs
- 150 pages of quality curriculum plus a post-test of 30 questions equals 3 CEUs
- 200 + pages of quality curriculum plus a post-test of 40 questions equal 4 CEUs
Monthly publications use the following guidelines to calculate CEUs for monthly
publications (i.e. newsletters, magazines, emailed PDF articles, etc.)*:
- 8–24 pages of education with a 5 question post-test may receive 0.5 CEUs.
- 25 pages or greater of education with a 10 question post-test may receive 1 CEU.
Each publication can receive 1 CEU per month; weekly newsletters will be considered
at 0.5 CEUs and would be approved only twice monthly. The vendor is required to
submit issue numbers or the dates of the issues per CEU request.
If a Self Study Guide is composed of coding scenarios, as a practice tool,
each scenario must have rationale provided. The rationale will be considered the
educational component. A word count computation will be performed as a measurement
of CEU value on the rationales. The coding scenarios must be checked and corrected
if needed by the sponsoring organization, prior to the participant receiving a CEU
certificate of completion. AAPC requires that the member pass with a 70 percent
score or higher in order to be awarded the CEU. For an example of an acceptable
coding scenario and acceptable rationale, please call 1-800-626-2633 ext 115.
Live or Recorded events including Seminars, Workshops, Audios, Teleconferences,
Live Web-Based Trainings, Courses, and Post Secondary School Courses, are
considered “Timed Sessions.” Timed Sessions will receive one CEU per
hour of training with a maximum of 40 hours.
- Live sessions: A post-test is not required. AAPC allows for limited
CEUs for testing as a supplement to curriculum.
- Recorded products: A post-test is required to verify attendance.
The test is required for a participant to access the CEUs catalog number assigned
to the recorded event, and does not require rationales. Each recorded event CEU
requires a minimum of 10 questions. No additional questions are required beyond
30 to earn CEUs for recordings of duration beyond three hours.
- A vendor can opt to include rationales with each question on its mandatory test
for recorded curriculum to earn one supplemental CEU per hour of approved education.
See above: Guidelines for all Required Tests and Tests for Supplemental CEUs
An Online Web-based “screen” is not the equivalent
of a page in a document. To ensure that the appropriate CEU assignment is made for
this type of curriculum, the guidelines for both printed publications and lecture-based
education are applied. CEUs will be awarded for both aspects of the guidelines above.
CEUs approved are based on written curriculum and “lecture-time” type
education. CEUs are for the vendor’s own curriculum, not for links to source
documents the coders can access on their own.
- Web-based curriculum requires a post-test to ensure materials were read and absorbed.
The test should be based on the curriculum word count: 10 questions for each 7,000
words, with a maximum of 40 questions. Word count consideration may be given for
any information-rich rationales that accompany the test questions
or any quizzes along the way. These rationales must qualify as curriculum in order
to be considered part of the word count. The post-test must follow AAPC guidelines
for tests.
*Note: Font size and spacing will be taken into consideration in
the page count. Online products may require word count calculation. See below “Word
Count Consideration” for more details.
Advertising with AAPC
AAPC-approved CEU Vendors have the opportunity to advertise their classes, conferences,
trainings, and other offerings with AAPC. Our
print, email and
Web site advertising offer an excellent vehicle by which to promote
your company's offerings to a dedicated audience of more than
300,000
medical coders and billers. For more information on advertising with AAPC, contact
Jamie Zayach, Advertising Coordinator, at 800-626-2633 x 191 or at
jamie.zayach@aapc.com. For information on ad rates, sizes, due dates, etc,
please see the AAPC Media Kit.
