MD/DO · Requirements & free courses
Alabama requires 25 hours per year for MD/DO renewal, including 2 topic-specific mandates. Every one of them has a free option below unless we say otherwise.
Dr. Jones holds an active Alabama medical license. These are requirements he tracks for his own renewal, not just ones he has read about.
Each requirement below is paired with activities we opened and verified ourselves.
2 hours every 2 years.
PCSS / American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry
Bundle worth up to 15 credits; 8 are needed for the DEA attestation.
PCSS / Opioid Response Network
14 stand-alone modules, roughly 0.75–1.25 credits each. Take only what you need.
NEJM Group / Massachusetts Medical Society
Explicitly satisfies the full one-time 8-hour DEA requirement in a single program. No NEJM or MMS membership needed. Carries ABIM, ABA and ABS MOC.
PCSS / American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry
SAMHSA grant-funded. Completing all 8 courses earns a digital badge that PCSS states fulfills the DEA 8-hour requirement. The landing page designates 9.25 credits generally; AMA PRA Category 1 is among the credit types offered.
More options on the opioids & pain page.
Designated one-time course required of all Alabama licensees; new requirement phased in by 12/31/25. Alabama licensees can take the ALBME-sponsored course free.
UC Irvine School of Medicine / PBI Education, sponsored by the Alabama Board
Satisfies Alabama's mandatory professional boundaries requirement in full.
Heads up: Free ONLY to Alabama licensees — access requires license verification. Physicians elsewhere must buy PBI's commercial version.
Pri-Med Institute
AMA Journal of Ethics (AMA Ed Hub)
Roughly 400–500 activities, 0.5–1.0 credit each, fully open access in perpetuity. The best free ethics library anywhere — effectively unlimited ethics credit for Texas, Michigan, Nevada and New Jersey.
Heads up: AMA's separate curated 'ethics CME track' and its completion certificate ARE member-only, and JAMA Network journal CME is paywalled at ~$45/article. The Journal of Ethics activities themselves are free to everyone.
Federation of State Medical Boards
From the FSMB itself. Only 0.5 credit, so combine it.
More options on the ethics & boundaries page.
What it costs, how long it takes, and what catches people out. Aimed at physicians taking assignments here rather than those already established.
Full participant and can serve as your state of principal license. But for Alabama alone the compact costs more: $775 via IMLC against $375 applying direct. It pays off across multiple states or when speed matters.
$375 to get licensed ($60 FSMB application, $175 board fee, $65 background check, $75 issuance) plus the $150 controlled substances certificate. None of it is refundable.
$300 license renewal plus $150 for the ACSC, both due December 31 every year. Alabama is annual, not biennial — one of the few states that is.
ALBME's own figure, and it recommends applying six months ahead. Your file must go before a scheduled board meeting, which is the bottleneck. A separate '2–3 weeks' figure on their site refers only to your checklist updating.
$150 a year, and it must come before your DEA registration, not after. Alabama inverts the usual order and this is where most people stall.
Graduated 2/4/5% but the top rate starts at $3,000, so effectively flat. Alabama allows a deduction for federal tax paid, which lowers the real rate. Some cities levy an occupational tax on top — Auburn is 1% and applies to nonresidents.
Alabama has no temporary, emergency or locum tenens license — the only limited license covers residency, visiting professorships and state institutions. So the chain runs in order with no shortcuts: board approval at a scheduled meeting, then the Certificate of Qualification, then the Medical Licensure Commission grants the actual license about a week later, then you apply for the ACSC, and only then can you get an Alabama DEA registration. Each step waits on the one before it. Budget the full two to three months and do not schedule an assignment against an optimistic date.
Sources: Alabama Board of Medical Examiners, Medical Licensure Commission, Ala. Code §§ 34-24-50 et seq., Board Rule 540-X-4-.09, Alabama Department of Revenue, Act 2025-334, IMLCC member list (March 2026). Verified August 22, 2026.
A one-time 8 hours on substance use disorders, required of every DEA-registered practitioner regardless of state, due at your next registration or renewal. The attestation does not recur — you will not be asked again at future DEA renewals.
PCSS / American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry
Bundle worth up to 15 credits; 8 are needed for the DEA attestation.
PCSS / Opioid Response Network
14 stand-alone modules, roughly 0.75–1.25 credits each. Take only what you need.
You may already be covered. The requirement is satisfied without new coursework if you are board certified in addiction medicine or addiction psychiatry, graduated within the past five years from a qualifying program whose curriculum included the required content, or previously completed DATA-2000 waiver training.
More at MATE Act options.
Boards revise requirements mid-cycle and interpret them differently. Confirm against your own board’s current rules — find yours here — before counting an activity toward renewal.