Of everything that can suspend a PSYPACT® authorization, the likeliest is not a disciplinary matter or a lapsed state licence. It is three hours of continuing education.
The requirement
Renewing the ASPPB E.Passport requires documented continuing education specifically related to telepsychology — a course concerning the psychologist's use of technology in practice, totalling at least three hours, completed within the approval period or since your most recent renewal.
Three hours a year is not a burden. It gets missed for a subtler reason: it does not feel like a deadline. Psychologists who diligently track forty hours of state-mandated CE arrive at E.Passport renewal and find that none of it qualified.
What does not count
This trips up careful people, so it is worth being explicit.
Your state CE does not count, even if you have far more hours than three. Different body, different cycle, different requirement. Satisfying one has no bearing on the other.
General ethics CE does not count merely because ethics is relevant to telepractice. The content has to be about the use of technology in practice.
A conference session you attended may or may not count depending on whether it was structured, documented CE with the right subject matter. "I went to a talk about telehealth" is not documentation.
Hours from a prior cycle do not roll forward. The requirement is tied to the period since your last renewal.
What does count
Structured continuing education whose subject matter is the practice of psychology using technology: telepsychology competencies, remote assessment, the clinical and ethical considerations of video-delivered care, security and confidentiality in remote practice, and the regulatory landscape of interjurisdictional practice.
Keep the certificate. Renewal applications are randomly selected for audit, and an audit asks for documentation you either have or do not.
The timing trap
Two facts combine badly. Renewal review takes roughly three to four weeks, and a share of applications are pulled for audit.
So discovering the CE gap at your renewal date is not a matter of quickly taking a course. It means the review has not started, the clock is running, and if you are audited you will be producing a certificate dated after the period it was meant to cover.
The consequence of running past the date is not a grace period. ASPPB notifies the Commission, and the APIT® moves to suspended — your cross-state authority stops that day.
A calendar that works
- 120 days out. Complete the three hours. Before the reminders, not because of them. File the certificate somewhere you will find it.
- 90 days out. ASPPB's first automated reminder. While you are in PSY|PRO, confirm your contact email is current — those reminders go to whatever address is on the account, which for many psychologists is an institutional address from a job they have left.
- 60 days out. File. This leaves room for a three-to-four week review plus an audit request without touching your expiration date.
- 30 days out. If you have not filed, this is urgent rather than upcoming.
One protection is worth knowing: where a holder has made a timely and sufficient renewal application, the authorization does not expire until that application is finally determined. Both words matter. An application filed on the deadline without its CE documentation is neither.
Why this is a service and not a reminder
A psychologist with a state licence, an E.Passport, an APIT®, and possibly an IPC and TAP® is tracking four or five independent expiry dates, each with its own CE rules, none of which satisfy each other. The failure mode is not carelessness. It is a calendar with too many entries and no single owner.
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