Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses

111 How to Handle a CE Audit Like a Pro (Without Losing Your Mind)

• Dr. Kate Walker Ph.D., LPC/LMFT Supervisor • Season 3 • Episode 111

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Ever found yourself in the midst of a CE audit and felt a wave of panic? I sure did when my LMFT license was audited. This episode promises to ease your worries by sharing my personal journey through the audit process, along with practical tips that kept me organized and stress-free. Discover the distinction between renewal notices and audit notices, and learn why your documentation only needs to be perfect when you're picked for an audit. I’ll also guide you on managing dual licensing, like my LPC and LMFT credentials in Texas, with insights into the sequential renewal process that could save you from unnecessary headaches. Plus, Step it Up members, don’t miss out on group coaching sessions and resources like BHEC Lunch and Learn that’ll arm you with knowledge and updates for navigating your professional landscape.

Dive into the updated world of continuing education requirements for LMFTs and LPCs in Texas as we navigate the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council's website. Together, we'll uncover the latest statutes and rules, including the carry-forward rule for excess hours and the specific requirements for supervisors and telehealth service providers. For those who’ve never faced a CEU audit, even after years of practice, this episode serves as a reminder of the importance of correctly submitting your documentation and understanding the self-query report requirement. Engage with us, share your experiences, and let’s tackle these professional challenges with the confidence that comes from being informed and prepared.

Get your step by step guide to private practice. Because you are too important to lose to not knowing the rules, going broke, burning out, and giving up. #counselorsdontquit.

Speaker 1:

Hey badasses, I'm here to get vulnerable. I mean, I guess getting your CEs audited isn't a bad thing, but it really kind of shows the world how disorganized you are, and when I say you, I mean me. So that's what today's all about. If you're a Step it Up member, you saw that I changed the calendar because this happened and I thought, oh my gosh, I have to show everybody what I do and how this works. So that's what you're getting today, you're getting now.

Speaker 1:

I have taken some time to kind of get things organized, so you're not seeing like, oh my gosh, I got the letter. And then here's what I did next. I did a little prep work, not gonna lie, because I do. Oh, what's my hair doing? Okay, there we go, because I do want to make sure I give you good information. And then, of course, I want to make sure that the information if I don't know the information that we make sure that we put this on our list to ask at the next BHEC Lunch and Learn or at the next free webinar with Christina DeLuna, because she's always great about answering, answering our questions. And there have been some changes one of the things. That's really kind of funny, because I was prepping this last week. When I looked at the rules it was as of August and I knew there had been a rules update on November 14th. And so today I'm going in to do a few last-minute things and I'm like, oh, it's the November rules and I haven't looked at them yet. So I had to real quick go into the rules, make sure they all still made sense to me. So I will be screen sharing today.

Speaker 1:

But if you are listening to me because you're awesome and you're on the treadmill or you're driving the kids to practice or whatever, go you. I will describe everything that I'm showing and hopefully that helps. So if you're live awesome, I'll take your questions at the end. If you're on a replay or you're listening on the podcast, just tag me in the Facebook group. You can go to Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses. If you're a Step it Up member, go to our dedicated tag me in the Facebook group. You can go to Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses. If you're a Step it Up member, go to our dedicated Facebook page in the Step it Up membership and don't forget every Tuesday at noon Step it Up members you get to have this group coaching with me and once I give my spiel, you can ask me whatever you like. So if you're listening to this and thinking I want to ask Kate a question at the next coaching session, yeah, just show up and ask me, I'll answer whatever I can. So, all right, here I go.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing I want to start with is the scary letter. All right, so it's not that scary, but I get asked a lot, or I see the question asked in the social media threads Okay, loud truck going by, I have my window open, it's a beautiful day. But I see the question where do I upload my CEs when I renew my license? And here's the thing you don't have to upload anything unless you receive an audit. So if you get the blue card, a postcard in the mail that says, hey, it's time to renew, and yes, they do still send that snail mail, although you should have it on your calendar at least 30 days before it's time to renew. I think mine's on my calendar 60 days, and I believe they have to send the notice out 90 days before. So if you get the white letter, that means you're going to have to submit your documentation for the audit, and so the audit that I got is for LMFT.

Speaker 1:

Now I'm dual licensed, so I'm an LPC and an LMFT in Texas. So I'm an LPC and an LMFT in Texas, and since I got those licenses in sequential years, I guess that word is correct. So what it means basically is I renew a license every year. So this year, on my birthday or the end of my birthday month, will be my LMFT. Next year, at the end of my birthday month, will be my LMFT. Next year, at the end of my birthday month, will be my LPC, and I am also a supervisor for both licenses, and so I will need to make sure my CEs match what is needed for that.

Speaker 1:

So, first things first, I wanted you to understand that it is a different document. It's a white letter as opposed to the blue postcard. So, oh, in fact, here's a post-it note. That's the color blue, not the postcard I wish, but that's what it would look like, okay, so what I want to do now is actually go to the rule. So the way to do that rule. So the way to do that. And if you hear my voice slowing down and you've been in one of these before you know that means I'm reaching for the screen share. So I have the BHEC website up and I have navigated to statutes and rules and it's easy to find that. You just look on the right statutes and rules. And it's easy to find that you just look on the right, all of those bullet points, you can go to statutes and rules and then click here and here. And when I say here, I mean the consolidated rule book for marriage and family therapy, the consolidated rule book for professional counseling and psychology and social work. So, since I am working on my MFT audit, I'm going to pull up the MFT rules.

Speaker 1:

Now, lpcs, listening to this, you will hear very, very similar stuff and I'll be sure to draw the parallel for what you need for your license, because it's a little bit different. So here I go. But sorry, one more thing. When they started aligning because of Sunset Review, they had to, you know, align a lot of the board stuff, right, the stuff that may not, scope of practice right, we all have our own identities with our license. But things like CE requirements, you know there was no reason that there were so many differences and so we see the same things, for instance, the 50% rule. I'm not going to talk a lot about that in this presentation because I have another episode, another video, another training on that. So you can always click the link and go see that explanation of the 50% rule. But it's in both licenses, right for LPC and LMFT. So here I go.

Speaker 1:

When I go to the PDF, first thing I notice is uh-oh, it's 11-22-2024, which is four days ago. So the one I looked at for this presentation was actually the August version. But no worries, there was not a real significant issue. And if you want to see the changes, you can go to page two and at the top it's going to tell you right away the new, amended and repealed rules. But we're not talking about that today. We are going to the section for continuing education. So we have to navigate clear past page 84 to where it says the Texas State Board of Examiners of Marriage and Family Therapists.

Speaker 1:

Okay, we're on the right track. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. And we want to get to. And I had trouble finding this last time and I should have just stuck Academic. I'll cut all this out when I'm editing Supervised clinical experience. No, we need continuing education. I think I've gone too far. Yep, because this is new. I'll just point this out since I'm lost when we have this is new to add the Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council statutes. After the member board, it talks about the statutes here on page 142. So that's kind of new. I'll probably talk about that more. Ah, there it is Okay.

Speaker 1:

Requirements for continuing education and in this works for LPC PDFs. When you click on the wording it's actually a hot link, which means it's going to take me, bam, right where I want to go. So here are my requirements that I should have gotten over my renewal cycle. Renewal cycle for LMFT is exactly the same as LPC. It's a 24-month renewal cycle. So in 24 months I need to have 30 hours of continuing education during each renewal period and they must include and this is what I'm going to show you in a second a spreadsheet where I've put all this out. So it makes sense to me. You want to probably do it in a way. It makes sense for you. But for LMFT I must have six hours in ethics and three hours in cultural diversity or competency. And it says I may carry forward to the next renewal period a maximum of 10 hours accrued during the current renewal period if they're not needed for renewal. Now that doesn't really help me because this rule came out before I renewed, no, after I renewed, so I can't carry anything over. This may help me for the next time I renew, though, in 2026. So I'll keep that in mind as I'm starting to tally up all my hours.

Speaker 1:

Now, special continuing education requirements A licensee with supervisory status that's me must complete six hours of continuing education and supervision. Now the word we're looking for here is additional, and it's not there. So that means of my 30, six have to be in supervision. Now LPCs ours is 24 and it's the same thing for supervision, though Six of the 24 must be in supervision. Now LMFT has an extra requirement. They want supervisors to take the jurisprudence exam, but I read this really carefully. I can't count it for supervision, but I can count it for ethics, so I'm required to take it as a supervisor. I believe everybody else in the other licenses. It's an option. Don't quote me on that, though. Go back again and listen to what I recorded before.

Speaker 1:

A licensee who provides telehealth services has to complete two hours of continuing education in technology-assisted services. So that's different from LPC. There's not a TAS, t-a-s requirement. So then it tells me what kind of acceptable ethics hours are. I'm going to actually skip that. I'm going to skip acceptable cultural diversity hours and I'm going to go to the 50% rule. So licensees must obtain at least 50% of their continuing education hours from one or more of the following types of providers. Remember, they don't approve providers, but they have approved types of providers and I'm not going to go through that. But I will show you, as I'm tallying up all of my stuff, how I account for that. And then this is kind of fun. Licensees shall receive credit for continuing education according to the number of hours. Where am I going? So, passage of the jurisprudence exam. You can claim one hour of ethics if you don't have to take it. So if you just feel like taking it, you can get one hour of ethics.

Speaker 1:

Preparing and giving a presentation at a continuing education activity the maximum number of hours that can be claimed for this activity is five hours. Authoring a book or an article activity is five hours. Authoring a book or an article, a peer-reviewed article and the maximum number of hours is five. Teaching or attending a graduate level course, and the maximum that can be claimed is five. Self-study Now, this means there's no certificate at the end. It's different than an online course. So a self-study means I open up a book and I read it. And then I say, good job, kate, that was a great book and I'm allowed to have one hour that I can apply toward my renewal. And then successful completion of a training course on human trafficking can count one hour of continuing education credit.

Speaker 1:

Now, the reason that's worded like that is because BHEC doesn't require human trafficking. Now, the reason that's worded like that is because BHEC doesn't require human trafficking. It's the Health and Human Services Department that requires it. Of all licensees, no matter what license they hold, must take human trafficking. So BHEC, lpc, lmft, psychology, social work, just say, hey, we know you got to take it anyway, so we'll let you count it toward your renewal. So yay, and then how long I need to hang on to it? All right, so that's the rule, those are the rules.

Speaker 1:

So let's kind of make it a little bit easier. So, long and short. I need six hours of supervision. I need three hours of cultural diversity. I need six hours of ethics. I need two hours of technology-assisted services and one jurisprudence. I have to take it because I am a supervisor, and so 12 can be whatever I want, whatever interests me, or it can be some of those hours I mentioned earlier.

Speaker 1:

So let's look here. So there's the 50% rule. So half of my courses have to be from a certain provider type. So 30 divided by 2 is 15. So 15 hours have to meet that requirement and these are optional. If I prepare and give a presentation, I can count remember up to five hours. If I write a book or a peer-reviewed journal article, I can get up to five hours. If I'm teaching a course, up to five hours. Self-study one hour and human human trafficking one hour. So I made kind of a matrix here. But again, you got to do it, so it makes sense for your brain.

Speaker 1:

So what I did is I started by looking at my calendar. I put everything in my Google calendar and if you're a paper person, I'm sure you put it in your paper calendar. So I started in January of 2023, and I went through every single continuing education thing that I did. Now this is a cool template I'm looking at. I'll describe it to those of you who are listening. I actually just went to Google Sheets and looked at their templates and this was a template, I think, for categorizing media, like a social media thing, but what I was able to do is go in and edit and pick the things that I wanted to categorize. So I just typed in ethics, cultural diversity, supervision, jp exam, tos or technology assisted services, and then I made a category for miscellaneous.

Speaker 1:

So, first things first, I went through and got everything, even if I didn't know exactly what it was. So if I didn't know exactly how many hours or the name of the presentation, or I can't find my certificate, I coded it in pink. So that means I need to go back and find more information. If there's no pink, it means okay, it's good to go, I have the documentation and I'm ready to upload it. However, however, I decide to do that I haven't really decided to do that, or I don't know. Actually I do I'm going to go and create a PDF and all my certificates are in a PDF form already, so I should be able to upload it. Fine. Then I have the topic.

Speaker 1:

So for the ethics consortium that was given by Dr Don Brunkenhofer of the practice class I attended that on January 13th 2023. And it was Kathy Banias-Lorente giving the presentation on ethics, and so it is a 50, it meets the 50% criteria because Don Brunkenhofer is a supervisor and that's one of the provider types and Kathy Banyas-Lorente is a supervisor, so the organization providing this met the 50% rule and the presenter providing the content met the 50% rule and it fell under my category. I created, which is I attended this. Now, you'll see, I also, same day, gave a presentation there. So I categorized it as preparing or giving a presentation and it meets the 50% rule and I put two hours. Actually, it's one hour. I think I know what I was thinking. I was going to go ahead and take however long it took me to put it together, but what I've decided is, if I categorize something as preparing or giving a presentation, remember I'm only allowed to count up to five hours of that anyway. So, as you can see, I've got quite a few of those in 2023. So I think I've met my maximum for my entire renewal cycle in 2023.

Speaker 1:

So the other type let's see attending a presentation, preparing a presentation, and that's really it. I think I'm caught up. You can see, through November 2nd I don't know what year that is. Let me correct that 2023 there we go, and so there are some question marks here. I should probably put that in pink, because I don't know how many hours these two were. So, as you can see, I'm not done yet, but I have a start and I knew that I would have a ton of hours. I knew I'd have way way more than 30.

Speaker 1:

My problem is the documentation. So I'm going to reach out to colleagues for a couple of things. I'll reach out if I'm missing a certificate. Today's November 26th, so I need to get this done pretty quickly. And I'm going to be sure to document, probably on a spreadsheet, the things that I'm responsible for. Remember that's preparing and giving a presentation, five hours. I did write a book last year, so I'll be sure to take my five hours there. I did teach a course in spring of 2024, so I'll be taking the maximum there. And of course I have to take human trafficking. So I'll count that so you can see I've got some work here to do, but I'm pretty sure I have enough CEs to make the audit. So that's my process.

Speaker 1:

Things I would change, regrets that I have. I really, really wish I had been keeping track a lot better. I mean I had my Dropbox folder that was like, okay, this is Kate's ethics certificates and I'm like, oh, good job, kate. I'm so. You know past Kate took care of me. Double click and I'm like, why are there only two certificates in there, right? I mean, I get busy and I know that there are certificates, probably in backpacks and piles and stacks, so I still have some work to do going to find those certificates and then getting them in a form that I can upload. Now what's the fine print here? I'm going to read this. This is the last thing I want to talk to you guys about.

Speaker 1:

During the online renewal process, you can upload your continuing education documentation as scanned PDF files, and so if yours is living on your computer, yay. If it's not, you can take a picture of it, turn it into a PDF. Licensees are encouraged to renew their license and upload their documentation at least 10 business days prior to the renewal deadline. Well, the end of December is holiday season and I, from past experience, know that that is not the time to be rushing people when are my things and did you get my things? So I'm going to really try to get this done in the next seven days.

Speaker 1:

It says, alternatively, you may submit proof of your continuing education documentation via the contact us page, but this method may result in greater delays by staff in locating and reviewing your documentation. Staff do not send notification of approval of your ceu audit. Therefore, you will need to submit your renewal application online and pay prior to your expiration date in order to avoid late payment penalty fees. If you choose to submit your CEUs using this method, so don't do it through the contact us method. Do it when you are renewing.

Speaker 1:

All right, that's my CE audit. Like I said, it kind of freaks me out because I've never had one and I've been licensed since 2006, 2004, something like that. So catch me if you guys see that I'm doing something wrong or you see there's something I can do better. Please tag me in Texas Counselors Creating Badass Businesses, tag me in the Step it Up Facebook group or tag me on Instagram at Kate Walker Training. I forgot to tell y'all one thing If you flip over my letter, it says if you are selected for an audit, you also must submit the self-query report. I think I already did this, but I will double check. So anyway, sorry I left that off, but I was reading everything and then I was like, oh no, I need to read this as well. And of course it's pretty important, especially if you've been licensed for a long time and you've never done the self-query. So just note to self See you soon.