CPSA Alberta Physician CPD Requirements Explained

Physicians practicing in Alberta sometimes assume "CPD requirements" means one number from one regulator. In practice, the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta (CPSA) layers its own continuing competence expectations on top of credit requirements set by national bodies, and understanding how those two pieces fit together is the key to staying compliant without over- or under-doing your annual hours. Here's how it actually works, based on current guidance from CPSA and the national colleges it defers to for credit tracking.

CPSA doesn't set its own credit number — it monitors enrollment in national programs

Rather than running its own CPD credit system, CPSA requires every physician on the general register to be enrolled in good standing in one of two national continuing professional development programs, depending on their specialty:

• Mainpro+, run by the College of Family Physicians of Canada (CFPC), for family physicians.
• Maintenance of Certification (MOC), run by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, for specialists.

CPSA checks that you're enrolled and in good standing as part of annual practice permit renewal, but the credits themselves are reported to and tracked by the national college, not CPSA directly. If you're building out a CPD plan and want a single place to source courses that count toward either program, our CPD course library is worth checking against your college's credit categories before you enrol.

What Mainpro+ and MOC actually require

The two programs are structured differently in the weeds, but they land on very similar numbers:

Under Mainpro+, credits split between certified activities (accredited group learning, structured self-learning) and non-certified activities (informal learning, personal reading), with at least 125 of the 250 credits required to be certified. MOC organizes activities into Group Learning, Individual Learning, and Feedback and Improvement, with the feedback category carrying its own hard minimum because the Royal College treats structured feedback as a distinct competence signal rather than something that can be substituted with more conference attendance.

PPIP: CPSA's own continuing competence layer

Where CPSA does set its own requirement is through the Physician Practice Improvement Program (PPIP), which exists separately from — and alongside — your national CPD credits. PPIP is Alberta's mechanism for fulfilling the continuing competence mandate under Part 3, Section 50 of the provincial Health Professions Act, and it requires three activities over a rolling five-year cycle:

• Practice-driven quality improvement — identifying and acting on an improvement area in your own practice.
• CPSA Standards of Practice QI — reviewing your alignment with the College's published standards.
• Personal development activity — commonly fulfilled through MSF360, CPSA's multi-source feedback tool, combined with structured reflective practice.

Each PPIP activity requires physicians to use data, build an action plan, and (for the personal development component specifically) work with a trained facilitator. Physicians self-report PPIP completion annually through CPSA's Renewal Information Form and must retain supporting documentation for six years in case of audit.

How this compares to other Canadian provinces

Every Canadian medical regulatory college requires physicians to maintain CPD, and virtually all of them rely on the same underlying Mainpro+/MOC infrastructure from the national colleges — that part is consistent nationwide. Where provinces differ is in what they layer on top. Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO) runs its own quality assurance and practice-review requirements distinct from Alberta's PPIP model; our guide to CPSO's continuing professional development requirements breaks down how Ontario's approach differs in structure and emphasis. If you practice across provincial lines — or manage compliance for a group that does — the national credit numbers travel with you, but the provincial layer (PPIP in Alberta, CPSO's program in Ontario, and equivalents elsewhere) does not, and needs to be tracked separately for each jurisdiction where you hold a license.

Why the two-tier structure exists

It's a reasonable question why Alberta doesn't just set its own credit number and be done with it. The practical answer is that national CPD programs already carry decades of infrastructure — accredited providers, credit categories, audit processes — that a single provincial college would be duplicating from scratch. By deferring credit tracking to Mainpro+/MOC and reserving its own requirement for a practice-improvement layer that's harder to standardize nationally (because it's about your specific practice, not a generic knowledge base), CPSA focuses its own oversight on the piece that's genuinely provincial: whether physicians are actively reviewing and improving how they practice, not just accumulating learning hours. That framing is consistent with the broader push across regulated healthcare professions toward competence-based, not just hour-based, compliance — a theme we explore more generally in building a culture of compliance in healthcare.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does CPSA set its own CPD credit requirement?

No. CPSA requires enrollment in good standing with Mainpro+ (family physicians) or MOC (specialists), and those national programs set and track the credit requirements — currently 250 credits over a 5-year cycle for both, with a 25-credit annual minimum.

What is PPIP and is it separate from CPD credits?

Yes, PPIP (Physician Practice Improvement Program) is CPSA's own provincial continuing competence requirement, distinct from national CPD credits. It covers three activities — practice-driven QI, Standards of Practice QI, and personal development — over a five-year cycle.

Who reports my CPD credits — CPSA or the national college?

The national college (CFPC or Royal College) tracks and reports your credits. CPSA checks enrollment and good standing status as part of practice permit renewal, but doesn't independently track credit totals.

How does Alberta's model compare to Ontario's?

Both provinces rely on the same national Mainpro+/MOC credit infrastructure, but each layers its own provincial requirements on top — PPIP in Alberta, and CPSO's own quality assurance program in Ontario. The two provincial layers are not interchangeable.

What happens if a physician isn't in good standing with Mainpro+ or MOC?

It can affect CPSA practice permit renewal, since good-standing enrollment in a national CPD program is a condition CPSA checks directly.

For most Alberta physicians, staying compliant comes down to two habits: keep your Mainpro+ or MOC credits on pace throughout the five-year cycle rather than back-loading them, and treat PPIP as a genuinely separate obligation rather than assuming your CPD hours automatically cover it. Track both, and CPSA's practice permit renewal becomes routine.