Navigating the continuing education process can be daunting. The language around continuing education requirements can be confusing. There are so many options out there; how does a Speech-language pathologist (SLP)  know that they are making the best choice for meeting their needs? In this blog, our Director of Education, Selena Reece, M.S., CCC-SLP, BCS-S, breaks it down.  

PDHs or ASHA CEUs: What does it all mean?

If you hold the American Speech Language Hearing Association’s (ASHA) Certificate of Clinical Competency (CCC), then you are required to achieve 30 Professional Development Hours (PDH) during your three-year maintenance interval. If you look at the ASHA website, you will see that that the requirement is for PDHs, not ASHA Continuing Education Units (CEUs).  Within each three-year maintenance interval, ASHA requires two hours of coursework in cultural competency, cultural humility, culturally responsive practice, or diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and one hour on ethics.

ASHA CEUs are a product provided to you by ASHA’s CE Registry. If you choose to pay the $28 per year for the ASHA CE Registry, they will keep a record of all the courses you take that are registered for ASHA CEUs. They provide you with a transcript, much like a college registrar. Of note, they will only keep a record of courses registered for ASHA CEUs, meaning courses offered by ASHA or any other organization registered with ASHA as an ASHA CE Provider.  You do not have to only take courses that are registered for ASHA CEUs and you do not have to receive pre-approval for a course that isn’t registered for an ASHA CEU. However, you should double-check that your courses are acceptable. ASHA has a list of activities that are acceptable and not acceptable for PDHs here.

What does it take to be an ASHA CE Provider?

Becoming an ASHA-approved CE Provider takes time, money, and patience. The application is lengthy, the application fee is $1,000 (increasing to $1,750 in 2025), and there is time spent onboarding on tracking and reporting ASHA CE participation. It does not stop there. If there is a change in your business such as a merger or acquisition, there is a $500 organizational change fee due at that time. There is an annual fee of $900 per year, increasing to $975 in 2025.  Also, every five years there is a five-year review fee that is anywhere from $350 to $1,000 depending on your past performance as an ASHA CE Provider. The fee is higher if you had more reporting errors in the previous interval. You can see the fee schedule here.

Why is Carolina Speech Pathology/Patheous Health Imaging an ASHA-Approved CE Provider?

Over 95% of our continuing education customers request that their participation be reported to ASHA, so we continue to be an ASHA CE Provider in good standing to serve our customers well. ASHA does not review their ASHA-Approved CE Providers’ content to ensure that it meets their standards; however, they train the providers on their expectations for ASHA-Approved CE Providers. When registering for a course with ASHA, ASHA-approved CE Providers indicate that they have reviewed the content and that the content meets ASHA’s standards. We ensure that each of PHI’s courses is high quality, evidence-based, and engaging because that is our promise to you.

What if I choose not to participate in the ASHA CE Registry?

When you register for a course with PHI, you can enter your ASHA number if you want us to report your participation to ASHA. If you do not wish to have your participation reported to ASHA, simply type NO. You will always receive a course completion certificate when you successfully complete a course. These certificates are stored for you in your Dashboard for any course taken virtually and we email certificates for any in-person course. If you choose not to use the ASHA registry, you will need to keep a record of your course completion in case you need to provide documentation of courses completed to maintain your CCC or your state licensure. We recommended saving all your course completion certificates in a folder and keeping a spreadsheet of all your courses for each maintenance interval. We will be adding a page with each state’s continuing education requirements very soon.

TL; DR

  • You are not limited to ASHA CEUs to earn the Professional Development Hours required for your ASHA certificate maintenance interval.
  • PHI is an ASHA-approved CE Provider, so if you choose to use the ASHA registry, we can submit your participation to ASHA.
  • If you do not wish to submit your participation to ASHA, you will receive a course completion certification and can maintain your own records.

Carolina Speech Pathology/Patheous Health offers a variety of continuing education courses to meet your needs, from self-study courses to live and limited-time web-based courses  and in-person courses If you have any questions or suggestions do not hesitate to reach out to Selena directly at education@patheoushealth.com