North Carolina News: Item 2168 - Changes to ACPE Numbering System

July 1, 2008 3:50 pm Topics: Continuing education, Pharmacists, and Pharmacy technicians

Reprinted from the July 2008 North Carolina Board of Pharmacy Newsletter.

The Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) continues to make changes to the substantive and procedural aspects of its continuing pharmacy education (CPE) standards. ACPE now requires a CPE program be plainly designated as targeted to pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, or both. A new numbering scheme is designed to indicate the intended audience.
Target audience designator: P – Pharmacist; T – Pharmacy Technician.

If a CPE activity’s target audience is exclusively pharmacists, then the designator “P” will be used as follows:
 01-P Disease state management/drug therapy
 02-P AIDS therapy
 03-P Law (related to pharmacy practice)
 04-P General pharmacy
 05-P Patient safety
If a CPE activity’s target audience is exclusively pharmacy technicians, then the designator “T” will be used as follows:
 01-T Disease state management/drug therapy
 02-T AIDS therapy
 03-T Law (related to pharmacy practice)
 04-T General pharmacy
 05-T Patient safety

A CPE activity intended for both pharmacists and pharmacy technicians will have the same Universal Program Number with respect to the provider identification number, cosponsor designation, year of release, sequence number, and format. The topic designator in the number, however, will be specific to each audience. For example:
 197-000-06-001-L05-P (program number to be used for
pharmacists)
 197-000-06-001-L05-T (program number to be used for pharmacy technicians)

Pharmacists should be aware of the new designations when selecting and reporting CPE hours for license renewal.