Maintaining licensure to continue to do what you love shouldn't be difficult. Sarah Thiel, RDH, explains how dental professionals can benefit from the CE Zoom continuing education platform.
Continuing education for dental professionals is mandated in 49 states. Maintaining licensure to continue to do what we love shouldn’t be difficult, which is why CE Zoom was created. CE Zoom is a continuing education platform designed to assist dental professionals in managing their CE.
CE Zoom was created for every dental professional: dentists, hygienists, dental assistants, dental consultants, dental lab techs, etc. You no longer have to sift through a lengthy document written in a foreign language to understand what your state requires for your individual license renewal. (Yes, you are welcome!) Currently, 32 states accept CE credits submitted via CE Zoom, so if you live in one of those participating states, you will never have to print or look at your certificates ever again. If your state asks for proof of CE you’ve taken, all you have to do is simply click a button that says, “Submit to state,” and you’re done.
CE Zoom has a registration feature that automatically adds all the courses you've signed up for to your personal dashboard for easy access. At the end of a conference session, you can open your account from any WiFi-enabled device, enter the verification code, take the mandatory survey, and automatically receive your certificate, which includes your name and license number. CE Zoom will then automatically track your credits and your state’s rules and regulations, and it will store your CE certificates so you can't lose them.
If you need credit for a professional association, such as the Academy of General Dentistry or the American Dental Association, there is a feature that allows you to select your professional affiliations right before you enter the verification code. The conference simply exports that list from its list of confirmed attendees and sends it directly to the association.
Many companies claim to have trackers, but in reality, these are digital filing cabinets. CE Zoom is a true CE tracker. Below is a screenshot of a dental professional's transcript page on the CE Zoom dashboard (figure 1).
Figure 1: A transcript on the CE Zoom dashboard tracks completed CE credit hours against state requirements (click to enlarge).
Note that this dental professional has completed 101.5 CE hours, but only 74.5 CE hours have been applied. This means that 27 credit hours did not count for this state. What if this dental hygienist thought she had met the requirements and got audited? This person would have failed the audit and received a fine. She would have been required to obtain the additional CE hours or risk losing her license. Note that, although 74.5 CE credits have been applied and only 45 are required, this person still hasn't satisfied all of the license renewal requirements—only 97%. If you were looking at the transcript page, you would be able to scroll down and see that this dental hygienist is missing a course required by her state. No matter how much CE she obtains, the tracker won’t show 100% compliance with the state's requirements until that course has been completed.
CE certificates can be manually uploaded to CE Zoom (which isn’t ideal), or they can be automatically generated through a conference. When you receive a CE certificate from a conference that is supported by CE Zoom, you will not have to manually upload anything. The certificate will appear automatically in your CE Zoom account under "Records," and it will be tracked on your transcript page.
There are many different offerings for registration, surveys, CE certificate distribution, CE tracking, finding courses within a selected radius, finding quality speakers, getting CE-certified, and managing company CE courses; however, only one offers all of these functions in one place, and that’s CE Zoom.
Author's note: Sign up for your free CE Zoom account at cezoom.com or e-mail [email protected] for information regarding company CE management and conference organization.
Editor's note: This article first appeared in Pearls for Your Practice: The Product Navigator.Click here to subscribe. Click here to submit a products article for consideration.
