Ontario Pharmacy Publishes Pass Rates by Practice Setting

Ontario does not tell pharmacists how many CPD hours to do. It assesses them and publishes the pass rates, broken down by professional class and by practice setting — community against hospital, pharmacist against technician. It is the closest thing in Canada to the per-profession cohort data UK regulators publish, and the breakdown is where it gets interesting.

No hours requirement at all

The starting point, in the Ontario College of Pharmacists' own words: "the College does not set a required number of learning activities or contact hours to be obtained each year". The requirement is a learning portfolio and participation in the quality assurance programme, not a credit total. The position is set out on the College's learning portfolio page.

That makes the assessment outcomes the only real measure of whether the system is working, which is presumably why they get published.

The 2023 outcomes, by setting

From the College's 2023 annual report. Routine practice assessments, with outcomes:

• Community pharmacists — 925 routine assessments. 92% "passed with self-directed learning"; 8% "required additional coaching and reassessment".
• Community pharmacy technicians — 225 routine assessments. 87% passed with self-directed learning; 13% required additional coaching and re-assessment.
• Hospital pharmacists — 235 routine assessments. 99% passed with self-directed learning.
• Hospital pharmacy technicians — 134 routine assessments. 100% passed with self-directed learning.

The report is published by the College.

The gap between settings is the finding

Community pharmacists pass at 92%, hospital pharmacists at 99%. Community technicians pass at 87%, hospital technicians at 100%.

Both comparisons run the same way and the technician gap is wider — thirteen points against seven. Two groups doing recognisably similar work produce materially different assessment outcomes depending on where they do it.

We are not going to tell you why, because the College does not say and we have not verified a cause. But it is the kind of finding that should change how an employer thinks about support: if you run a community pharmacy, your staff sit in the cohort that needs additional coaching roughly one time in eight, and your hospital counterparts essentially do not.

One caution on reading these numbers. The College does not publish how registrants are selected for practice assessment — whether randomly, by risk, or on a cycle. If hospital and community registrants are selected by different methods, part of the gap could be selection rather than performance. We could not establish the method, so treat the comparison as a real difference in outcomes rather than a proven difference in competence.

Two assessment types, and a transition that shows in the data

The report also captures a change mid-flight. Self-assessments completed in 2023: 0 pharmacists and 1,189 pharmacy technicians, with the explanation in a footnote — "The College transitioned to Knowledge Assessments for pharmacists in 2022."

Knowledge assessments completed: 3,369 pharmacists.

So pharmacists moved from self-assessment to knowledge assessment while technicians stayed on self-assessment. A zero in a data table that looks like an error is sometimes a policy change, and this is a good example of why a footnote matters more than the number above it.

What the committee actually did

The enforcement end is strikingly light. Quality assurance committee activities in 2023:

• "0 registrants referred to the Inquiries, Complaints and Reports Committee by the QA Committee"
• "1 registrant with Terms, Conditions or Limitations placed on their certificate of registration regarding quality assurance activities"
• "8 registrants referred to the QA Committee and directed to undertake remediation"

Across roughly 1,500 routine practice assessments and over 4,500 knowledge and self-assessments, the disciplinary stream saw nobody. One registrant picked up conditions; eight were directed to remediation.

Compare Ontario nursing, where 43 nurses were referred to the equivalent complaints committee from 5,000 selections in 2025 — covered in our guide to Ontario's nursing quality assurance programme. Same province, same statutory architecture, very different referral behaviour.

Date-stamp this one carefully

These are 2023 figures, published in a report we accessed in 2025. We have not confirmed whether a 2024 or 2025 annual report exists with newer numbers, and the College separately refers to a College Performance Measurement Framework holding "additional indicators related to quality assurance activities" which we have not opened.

So treat every figure above as 2023 and go looking for a newer report before quoting it as current. Of all the sources we examined across Canada and Australia, that performance framework is the most likely place further outcome data is sitting unused.

Why this matters beyond Ontario

Very few regulators publish outcome data broken down this way. Most publish the requirement and nothing about whether anyone meets it. Ontario pharmacy publishes volumes, pass rates, a class breakdown, a setting breakdown and its committee's dispositions — and sets no hours requirement at all, which makes it a useful counter-example to the assumption that rigour requires a credit total.

The underlying provincial requirements, including Ontario's, are in our guide to pharmacist CPD requirements by province. And for what happens when a declaration about compliance turns out to be wrong rather than merely short, see shortfall versus false declaration.

This article quotes the Ontario College of Pharmacists' 2023 annual report as published. Figures are per year and the selection method is not published; verify with the College before relying on any of them.