To Renew or Not To Renew Your Physical Therapy License

To renew or not to renew your physical therapy license? That is the question.

Sometimes, there is no question. If you live and work in just one state and don't plan to move or work in another state, then yes. Fulfill your physical therapy CEU requirements, renew on time and keep on practicing! Other times though, it’s not so cut and dry.

• Do you live near the border of two states?
• Have you made a big move and aren't sure you’ll go back?
• Did you get a coveted non clinical job?
• Are you a traveler who loves the nomadic life?

Neighboring States

Living and working in neighboring states, you only need to decide if you are willing to maintain two PT licenses. Take Oregon and Washington for example. It’s only a 5 minute drive across a bridge to travel between Portland and Vancouver. Sure, It may take you 45 minutes of rush hour traffic to get to the bridge, but that’s another story. There are a few hospitals between these two cities, a numbers of SNFs and plenty of outpatient clinics.

Some hospital systems have locations in both cities and employ therapists to float between their facilities in both states. These positions definitely require you to maintain both licenses.

But what about other scenarios? You might like the option of working a full time job and also picking up some per diem work. Or you might work ‘full time PRN’. This means you don’t work for any one organization full time, but you choose to work full time hours between multiple unaffiliated locations. Maybe you just want to be ready if a job you are interested comes up in the other state.

The pros of keeping both physical therapy licenses in these scenarios (more options) generally outweigh the cons (more investment). If Oregon requires 24 CEUs and Washington requires 32 CEUs, you will already be close to or have met the PT CEU requirement for the other state. And while there are a few special requirements for each state, the courses you take to fulfill them will mostly likely count in the other state. The cost isn’t very prohibitive either. A renewal in Oregon is $130-$200 every two years and in Washington it’s $70-$75 per year. So even if you only work one day a year in the other state, your license would pay for itself by working that one day.

The Big Move

Many people grow up in one place and either stay there for college or return there after graduating. This is a pretty straightforward path requiring just one physical therapy license. But what if something changes and you decide to move. And for whatever reason, you are pretty sure this is will be a one time thing. Do you let that first license expire? Or do you keep up with your PT renewal requirements and maintain an active license just in case the big move doesn’t work out and you want to return home?

This decision might depend on the state you moved from. Many states allow you to place your license on inactive status and make it easy to reactivate. For example, in Pennsylvania, you can let your license become inactive indefinitely, and reactivate at it by paying the fees and completing the continuing education requirements for the previous biennium. If you are completing CEUs for your new state license, most of these will likely count toward the Pennsylvania requirements anyway.

On the other hand, if you let a South Carolina license become inactive, the path to reactivation gets more difficult as time passes. More than three years and not actively practicing in another state will require supervised clinical practice and a completion of an exam. More than three years with an active out of state license requires 1,000 hours of employment within the past year and verification of the active license. Either way, it would be easier to keep that license active for a few years as the fees are only $80-$90 every two years and the PT CEU requirements are 30 hours. While 30 hours may sound like a lot, it sounds a lot better than re-taking an exam!

If you aren't sure, you can always keep your PT license active for the first renewal cycle following the move and then reassess at each subsequent expiration date.

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Non Clinical Job, Here I Come!

You’ve finally found the non clinical job of your dreams. Congrats! You might start singing that old childhood rhyme “no more pencils, no more books...” Well, not so fast. For many non clinical jobs, you will still be required to maintain an active physical therapy license. And yes, that means keeping up with those CEUs.

Even if your new non clinical job doesn’t require an active license, you’ve lived through the COVID-19 pandemic and now know how quickly life can change. While you may hope to never use your gait belt again, you never know when you might need to. You might never return to full time clinical work, but you could find you enjoy being a clinician in a per diem role. Or, you might just want to maintain your skills so it will be easier to return to clinical care if you decide you miss it. It has happened! This one seems like a no brainer, complete the CEUs and pay the fees for your home state so you have something to fall back on.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

The travel bug! It may sometimes fall dormant, but does it ever truly go away? If you love to travel and become a travel physical therapist, you may find yourself with more state licenses than you know what to do with. How many is too many? Someone in a facebook travel group once said they kept 22 active licenses! For her, this isn’t too many. For you, it might be.

Aside from paying for all the renewal fees, you also have to manage the PT CEU requirements for each state. Even if you think keeping track of the totals for each state might not be that hard, don’t forget about the ever changing special requirements many states have. It might be a few hours of ethics here, a pain management course there, implicit bias training once, jurisprudence every five years. If you like the flexibility of being able to work in any state you’ve already been licensed in at the drop of a hat, keep them all and use CEU Keeper to help you manage everything! If you're sure you have been to some one-and-done states, let those licenses expire.

There are a few state licenses that are probably worth keeping if you have them, regardless of if you think you’ll go back. For example, California and Texas generally have the most job opportunities and are difficult to get relicensed in once you’ve let them lapse.

After 5 years of inactive status, California automatically becomes expired and then you have to start all over. Jurisprudence exam, fingerprints, the whole nine yards. Similarly in Texas, you can restore an expired license with another application, Jurisprudence exam, fingerprints, a human trafficking course and criminal history report from the FBI.

It’s a judgement call and you might not always get it right, but it’s definitely worth looking at the rules and regulations documents of each state before you just let a license lapse so you know what you’ll have to do if you change your mind. You can find links to every state physical therapy board here.

So...What is the Answer?

You heard it in PT school and you'll never stop hearing it. It depends! Obviously, as long as you are working in clinical care, you will need an active license for the state in which you are practicing. Personally, even if I fully transition out of clinical work, I'll always keep at least one active license. Just as I consider paying for health care to be the cost of my freedom from a full time job, I consider keeping an active license an insurance policy. You never know when you'll need (or want) to work as a physical therapist again.