Renewing Your CCMA Certification

candace846
Oct 16
4 min read

Continuing Education Credits and Navigating the NHA Website

by Marielle Friedman and Abigail Grisham

Continuing Education, or CE, is a vital part of the Medical Assisting journey to not only pursue further education, but to maintain your certification as a CCMA. Through the National Healthcareer Association (NHA) website, you can purchase, complete, and upload CE credits that will apply towards your eligibility to renew your certification.

Renewal of your CCMA certification must be done every 2 years in order to keep it valid. The cost of renewal is $185 USD.

In this guide, we will walk through the steps to renew your CCMA certification through the NHA website.

How can I renew my CCMA certification?

First, let’s navigate to the NHA website. Here is a direct link to their website: https://www.nhanow.com/. This is the homepage of the NHA website. You can click “Login/Account” at the top right, and log in to your NHA account.

Note: If you have forgotten your login information, you can reach out to your CCMA Instructor that helped you set up your account when signing up for the national exam, OR click “forgot password” and follow the steps to reset your account password. Please notify your Instructor of any password changes.

Once you are logged in, click on “Renew Certifications” under RECERTIFICATION on the left hand side of the main page.

This will lead you to the Certification Renewal page, which lists the type of certification you've earned, the certifications expiration date, and how many CE credits you still need to complete until you are ready to renew. If it says "Not Ready" under Ready to Renew, it means you have not completed enough Continuing Education credits to be considered for renewal.

How can I find and purchase CE courses?

Click “Find More CE” on this page. This will take you to the NHA Store where you can browse available courses through the NHA that will automatically apply to your requirement of 10 CE credits once you complete the course. Each course will list the name of the course, how many CE credits it is worth, and how much the course costs.

You will notice that there are a variety of topics, some have more credit value than others, and that not all courses are free. On the left hand side you can see Filters.

Make sure you are checking off “Clinical Medical Assistant” so you can choose CE courses that will count towards your CCMA renewal eligibility. You can also click “Sort by:” at the top right of the list of courses, and click “Price: Low to High” to see what free courses are available first. Choose what courses you want to complete and make sure you are adding up to at least 10 CE credits.

Add the courses to your cart and proceed to check out. If you only purchased free courses, the total should say $0 and you can make sure your name and address are correct, then checkout!

How do I complete my purchased CE courses?

Return to the NHA dashboard. From here you can click “Continuing

Education” under the RECERTIFICATION header. This will bring you to ‘My CE Courses’ where you can access all the purchased CE courses you have chosen

If the button next to the course name says “Review” the course has been completed and credit has been awarded. You can go back and review the materials. If the button says "Continue", you have started your course, but not yet completed it. If the button says "Start", you have purchased the course but not yet opened it. Be sure to complete the course before the expiration date.

Here is an example of a completed CE course:

What if I have CE credits that are not through NHA?

CE credits can be completed from other sources other than the NHA. If you want to upload CE credits from external sources, you can click “Upload External CE”.

To upload external CE, you will need to provide the Title of the external program and the hours spent on the course. The NHA calculates the credits based on the number of hours in attendance for the external CE program. For example: 10 hours of CE program time is equal to 5 CE Credits. You will need to provide documentation that shows the external program meets any or all criteria to be counted as CCMA Continuing Education.

To the left, you can see an example submission on the NHA website.

How will I know if I am ready to renew?

Once you have completed enough CE credits to renew your certification, the tracker will change from “Not Ready” to “Ready” and the button to Renew and Pay will be accessible. Click “$Renew and Pay”...

...Check off CCMA...

...And your renewal purchase will be added to your cart. Click Proceed to Checkout and enter your payment information.

You can always check your CE History. Here you can see when you have completed specific CE credits, as well as view, delete, and edit External CE credits that you have uploaded.

Now that you have reviewed this information, you are ready to take the steps to renew your CCMA certification that you’ve worked so hard to earn. Stay motivated, keep learning, and remember - you can do hard things!