Maintenance pre-approval

Preapproval applies only to Maintenance and cannot be used once your certification has lapsed. It cannot be used if you have a maintenance extension or are in reinstatement. If you are unsure that your continuing education activities will meet your NCC maintenance requirements, you can ask NCC to pre-approve your CE activities. This is optional. You can submit your CE activity, choosing the code you feel best applies.  NCC will review and approve or correct the code if the CE activity is applicable to maintenance. Any approved CE activity will be automatically uploaded to your online maintenance application on the NCC website with the appropriate specialty code. This means you won't have to re-enter them into your online maintenance application at the time you submit your application and pay your maintenance fee. Pre-approval is a separate fee and costs $30.00. If you attended meetings that were coded by NCC please do not submit them in pre-approval. Those meetings were coded using titles and descriptions and the code may not be accepted without the description.  If pre-coded you do not need pre-approval. If you want to seek pre-approval you must also include the description. 

Preapproval is not required for submission of a maintenance application and is not part of the maintenance process. You must complete your online maintenance application and pay the maintenance fee to maintain your NCC certification. Once the preapproval is submitted it is not refundable. 

Please pay attention to the following:

  • DO NOT LIST NCC CE MODULES. Modules are automatically posted to your online maintenance application and pre-coded.
  • DO NOT LIST NON-CE ACTIVITIES SUCH AS AUTHORSHIP, PRECEPTORSHIP, ETC. They are baseline activities only. Use the special codes on the online maintenance application for such activities.
  • FOR ALL CONFERENCES. For all conferences with multiple sessions, each session must be identified individually. A conference title will not be coded.  If a conference title is provided that does not provide enough information to be coded, it will not be coded and you will need to enter and code it yourself or submit a new pre-approval application listing the lectures as required.  Conferences with pre-approved codes should not be submitted to pre-approval. You should enter these titles and the code provided by the conference provider into your maintenance application. 

General CE is not applicable, such as fire safety, use of restraints or any topic that would be expected of any nurse regardless of specialty.

Preapproval - How It works:

  • You complete the online form which will ask you for the name and date of the lecture, the number of hours awarded and who accredited the program/activity
  • You will pick the code you feel the lecture meets. Coding information is provided for you.
  • You can choose to save entries to your CE history - if you want to maintain a CE record in your profile. These will be available to you if you are selected for a random audit.
  • Once submitted with payment, the form will be reviewed by NCC.  Codes will either be approved, changed or denied.
  • You will receive an email advising you of the status of each CE activity submitted and its specialty code.
  • It takes a minimum of 48 hours (business days) to process a preapproval request.
  • Approved activities will be added to your online maintenance application once approved by NCC. Select the add, track or submit your CE link under Maintain Your Certification section to access your online maintenance application.
  • You must complete the online maintenance application and submit it with your maintenance fee.
  • If you did not submit enough information about any of your entries, these will not be preapproved and will have to be coded and manually entered into your online maintenance application by you. You can choose to submit another pre-approval application with the details of the lecture if you are unable to code it using the coding books under the maintenance tab.

How to list activities

  1. Listing Lectures: If the program contains a number of sessions/lectures (for example national meetings) list each session/lecture attended separately and each session/lecture will be coded.
  2. Listing a Program: If you attended a one day program on one content area you can list the single program if you believe that it is all covered by one code. In these cases, assign a single specialty code representing the majority of the content contained in the program.
  3. All conferences with multiple sessions/lectures must have each session/lecture identified and listed individually. 
  4. If lectures or sessions are not listed individually, a second preapproval application will need to be submitted listing each of the sections so they can be coded.  This will be a second submission and would require payment of an additional preapproval fee.
  5. 1 hour of lectures is equal to 1 CE.  IF you attended a day conference and obtain 8 CE you will need to divide it up among the different lectures to receive the individual codes.  If you felt that all lectures were about one topic you can put in a descriptive title and put in the 8 CE but be sure the title accurately reflects the content for a one-day meeting.
  6. All maintenance applications are subject to random audits.  Any certificant who is audited will need to upload the conference/lecture description and the CE certificate.  It is recommended that you upload these in the preapproval application so they are on file in case of an audit. 
  7. If you have questions about your maintenance preapproval report, send to info@nccnet.org.

Maintenance pre-approval form