RxCE

What RxCE is

RxCE is an online continuing education provider for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, with a second catalog of CME for physicians and physician assistants. Its About page says RxCe.com "was founded to provide high quality continuing education at an affordable price", and the home page says it has been "Trusted for over 20 years"; the About page puts that as founders with over 20 years of experience selling online continuing education. The home page also claims the trust of "hundreds of thousands of professionals". Pharmacy CE is the core of the product: accredited self-paced courses, a monthly program of live webinars, two certificate programs, and automatic reporting of credits to CPE Monitor, CE Broker and JA-PARS.

A requirements finder sits at the top of every page. A visitor picks a profession (pharmacist, pharmacy tech, physician assistant, physician or student) and a jurisdiction, and the site shows what that jurisdiction requires for license renewal. The list covers the states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands, and also provinces and territories such as Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia.

Pharmacy courses and certificate programs

The pricing page describes the routine in four steps: check your requirements, choose a plan, "Read the material and take the assessment at your own pace", and get credit. On-demand courses work on desktop, tablet and mobile. The About page lists "Live CE Courses & Pre-Recorded Webinars" among the formats, and the pharmacy menu has its own entry for Virtual Patient Labs.

The courses the pricing page features show the range: Federal HIPAA Law Compliance for Health Care Professionals, a course on injectables in weight loss management, Mitigating Implicit Bias in Healthcare, Improving Cultural Competency in the Healthcare Setting, and a course on pain management with opioids and controlled substances, each at one or two accredited hours. Beyond single courses, RxCE runs certificate programs, which the pricing page describes as specialized certificates "in the areas of Diabetes and Immunization".

Live webinars

Live hours are where RxCE does more than a plain course library. The Live page says it currently offers "around 30 hours of Live Pharmacy Continuing Education each year". Each webinar is a 45 to 50 minute presentation followed by a question and answer section with the presenter, and each 1-hour webinar is worth 1 live contact hour. The FAQ says there is at least one live course each month, and that quarterly it offers four on the same day, a format the Support page calls the quarterly 4 hour Live Conferences. Upcoming sessions listed include a multidisciplinary look at breast cancer treatment and a session on end-of-life cancer care, both on Saturdays at 12:00 PM EST, and a December day of four gastrointestinal topics: IBS, GERD, ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.

Live webinars and live conferences count as live contact hours; pre-recorded webinars do not, the Support FAQ says. Webinars are free for members with an annual subscription and $15 each for non-members. Registration happens from the account's Live Webinars tab, and attendance needs the GoToWebinar application for iOS, Android, Mac or PC. A phone line is not an option: "ACPE does not allow participants to 'call into' a live conference."

Physician and PA CME

The physician course list advertises free physician CME across a long specialty list: anesthesiology, cardiology, critical care, emergency medicine, endocrinology, gastroenterology, general surgery, geriatrics and palliative care, hematology, hospital medicine, infectious diseases, internal medicine, nephrology, oncology, pediatrics and rheumatology. The page promises "unlimited AMA PRA Category 1™ Credits with no tests and instant certificates", and banners offer 8 free DEA/MATE CME credits. Courses can be filtered by format (pre-recorded, live, monograph or PDF, gamified, free, and Virtual Patient Lab) and sorted by hours or date added. Paid physician CME costs $6 per credit, and the pricing page points physicians and PAs to CME courses "with gift card bonuses".

Accreditation and credit reporting

Every page carries the same statement: RxCE.com "is jointly accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME), the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE), and the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC), to provide continuing education for the healthcare team." The About page adds a "Huge Selection of ACPE-Approved Courses".

Reporting is automatic once the account holds the right details. On first login a member confirms the email address and enters license details so courses can be submitted to CPE Monitor and CE Broker; the NABP eProfile ID and date of birth must match. The site gives two timings. The FAQ says to wait 2-4 hours for CPE Monitor to process a course, then use a "Click to Check" button that checks the report and resubmits it if needed; a note on the Support page says completed tests take 24-48 hours to appear on CPE Monitor and CE Broker.

Pricing

There are two ways to pay. Pay per course starts at $4.99 for pharmacy courses and $6 per credit for physician CME, which the About page calls "The most affordable way to hit your CE requirements". The unlimited membership costs $69 per year for pharmacists and $42 per year for pharmacy technicians. Both plans include all accredited courses, the live webinars and reporting to CPE Monitor, and both list a 30-day money back guarantee; the About page words it as "30-Day Money-Back Guarantee, No Questions Asked". Discount codes run across the top of the site: RPH for $10 off the pharmacist plan and TECH for $5 off the technician plan.

A free sample course lets a pharmacist or technician try the site first. The FAQ says no payment details are needed: after creating an account, the free course is added automatically at checkout.

Using the account

Everything sits under My Info/Courses, split into Incomplete Courses, Complete Courses and Live Webinars tabs. The technical requirements are modest: Windows 7, 8, 10 or 11, or Mac OS X 10.9 or later, with Edge, Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera and an internet connection. Support runs through a contact form and a help email address, and the About page introduces a customer service manager and a support team by name.

Who teaches

The About page lists faculty in three groups. The physicians include an assistant professor of internal medicine who is CE course director at Northeast Ohio Medical University, a child and adolescent psychiatrist with 30 years in healthcare, and a former Stanford University faculty member. The nurses include board-certified nurse practitioners. The pharmacists include an emeritus associate professor of pharmacology at the University of Connecticut School of Pharmacy, the director of that university's Office of Pharmacy Professional Development, and board-certified psychiatric and ambulatory care pharmacists. A PharmD serves as CPE administrator.

What members say

The home and pricing pages carry ten five-star member reviews. Three of them: "Easy to use website, broad catalog of topics, provision of CE requirements required by state of license." (CJM); "Had the course that I needed at a reasonable price. The sign up process was simple and easy." (Daniel M.); and "I enjoyed the vaccine webinar greatly. Very good information... Great job! Looking forward to my next one and will recommend it to my friends" (Nataly W.).

Who it suits

RxCE suits pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who renew every cycle and want live hours in the same subscription. At $69 or $42 a year, the unlimited plans cover the self-paced catalog and the monthly webinars together, and the quarterly four-session day is built, in the Live page's words, to make it easy to catch up on live credits. A pharmacist who needs only a course or two can pay per course from $4.99, and the requirements finder helps check what a state or province asks for first. Physicians and PAs get a free route to AMA PRA Category 1 credit with no tests, plus free DEA/MATE credits.

The caveats are practical. Live hours run on a fixed schedule, so a technician short on live credit has to plan around the listed dates, and joining needs the GoToWebinar app rather than a phone call. The plans on the pricing page are individual memberships; the site shows no group or employer plan.