Continuing medical education (CME) is required for all physicians in order to maintain medical licensure. For example, here in Ohio, we must have 50 hours of CME credit every two years to keep our medical licenses. There are a lot of ways to get CME but the costs can vary substantially.
- Hospital grand rounds. Many hospitals provide free grand rounds lectures for physicians on their medical staff with one grand rounds equalling one CME credit hour. But it is difficult for most physicians to block out an hour each week to attend an in-person lecture – maybe they work night shifts, maybe the grand rounds conflicts with their operating room block, or maybe they have an outpatient clinic a distance from the hospital. For any number of reasons, most physicians are unable to attend the hospital’s 8-9 AM Thursday grand rounds. It still costs the hospital money to produce the grand rounds with administrative time to maintain CME accreditation and honoraria expenses for speakers. But the hospital generally provides CME for free as a perk to physicians. Nevertheless, every dollar that the hospital spends to put on a grand rounds is a dollar that they cannot pay the physicians in salary.
- Medical conferences. Every national medical society has an annual meeting. As a pulmonary/critical care physician, I often attended the annual CHEST (American College of Chest Physicians) and ATS (American Thoracic Society) meetings. These are usually held in convention centers at large cities once a year and last an average of about 4 days. You can get a lot of CME credit by attending lectures and symposia with the potential of getting 25 CME credit hours by attending one medical conference. But it comes with the cost of airfare, hotel stay, conference registration, food, and taxi/Uber fare. Using the 2026 CHEST conference in Phoenix as an example, airfare is about $550, hotel stay is about $1,000, conference registration is about $1,300, taxi/Uber is about $50, and food is about $300. The total cost for the conference is approximately $3,200.
- Professional societies. Many physician professional organizations will provide free online CME to members. But you have to pay an annual membership fee to access that CME. As an example, the American Medical Association has 64 online CME credit hours for members but the annual membership fee is $420/year.
- Professional society-sponsored. Other professional societies will sponsor online CME that can be purchased, with society members often getting a discount on the purchase price. As an example, the American College of Physicians offers up to 165 hours of online lecture recordings from its annual meeting for $1,500. East hour of recorded lecture provides one CME credit hour. This is a less-expensive alternative to attending the annual meeting in person.
- Medical journals. Many medical journals will provide free online CME to subscribers. As an example, the New England Journal of Medicine has 300 online CME credit hours available to subscribers. An annual subscription is $190.
- UpToDate. Since its inception in 1992, UpToDate has emerged as the main online reference for many physicians. It offers CME credit for reading “chapters” about thousands of medical conditions and medications. The subscription cost is $500 per year.
- Webcasts. Many academic medical centers provide online webcasts or podcasts for a fee. As an example, the OSU MedNet-21 webcast provides 40 hours of CME webcasts and podcasts each year at a cost of $25 per credit hour. As a disclaimer, I was the host/moderator of OSU MedNet-21 for 23 years.
Taking these as examples, it is clear that there is a huge difference in the cost of the various ways to get CME credits. Taking Ohio’s medical licensure requirements as typical for state medical boards, a physician must get at least 25 CME credit hours per year to maintain licensure. To get those 25 CME credits, the graph below shows the cost per credit hour between the various options.
At $128 per credit hour, attending a national medical conference is the most expensive way to get CME and if the sole reason for attending is for CME purposes, it is a poor investment. However, there are many other reasons to attend national medical meetings – networking with peers, access to the latest research study results, ability to present one’s own research, and time away from clinical practice to focus purely on learning. Moreover, these meetings are usually in desirable travel destinations, allowing physicians to make mini vacations out of attending a conference. Many employers will reimburse the cost of attending one conference every year as an employment perk so the conference may not cost the physician anything directly out of pocket. However, if the employer is paying for the cost to attend a conference, that is money that is not being paid directly to the physician in salary.
Getting online CME from a professional society that the physician is a dues-paying member of is relatively inexpensive. Being a member of the American Medical Association gets you access to CME at $17 per credit hour for 25 CME credits. Most physicians belong to at least one professional society so this can be a very cost-effective way to keep up CME credits.
However, online CME courses that are sponsored by professional societies but not offered for free can be quite expensive. To get 25 credit hours of online CME through the American College of Physicians every year would cost $60 per credit hour.
Subscribing to medical journals is one of the least expensive ways to get CME. At $8 per credit hour, a subscription to the New England Journal of Medicine is a bargain.
An annual subscription to the online reference UpToDate will get you CME at $20 per credit hour. This is a particularly efficient way to get CME since most physicians who use UpToDate use it primarily to look up the current recommended approach to diagnosing and treating various conditions that their patients have. So, many physicians subscribe to UpToDate for its use as a reference and then get the CME credit as a bonus for reading that material.
Webcasts, such as OSU MedNet-21, cost about $25 per CME credit hour in order to get the 25 credit hours per year required for medical licensure. This can be a great option for physicians who like to get their continuing medical education in a lecture format, like a grand rounds, but with the advantage of watching on-demand at a time that is most convenient for the physician.
The bottom line…
The least expensive way for most physicians to meet their state’s CME requirements is to find a hospital that provides free CME to grand round attendees. But because attending a grand rounds each week at a set time on a set day is not possible for most physicians due to conflicts with patient care, the most practical way to get inexpensive CME is by subscribing to a medical journal that offers free CME to subscribers or by becoming a member of a professional society that provides free CME to members. UpToDate is slightly more expensive but allows physicians to get CME for topics that they were going to look up and read about anyway. Webcasts are a cost-effective way to get grand rounds-type CME on-demand. Professional society sponsored online CME courses and attendance at a professional society annual meeting are the most expensive ways to get CME, although there can be other reasons why a physician might want to attend a conference other than purely for CME purposes.
January 20, 2026
