Florida Physician Assistant Licensing Requirements

To practice as a physician assistant in Florida, you need a license from the Florida Board of Medicine or the Florida Board of Osteopathic Medicine. The Florida physician assistant licensing requirements are straightforward in outline: graduate from an ARC-PA accredited program, pass the national certifying exam, clear a fingerprint-based background check, and pay a $305 application fee. Once licensed, you renew every two years by January 31 of each even-numbered year and complete 100 hours of continuing medical education each cycle.

Education and Exam You Need Before Applying

Your PA program must be accredited by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA). The degree that program awards you matters, and the cutoff is the graduation date. If you finished after December 31, 2020, you need a master’s degree. If you finished on or before that date, a bachelor’s or master’s from an accredited program qualifies.¹ Older graduates fall under legacy rules: completion of an approved primary care or surgery program qualifies anyone who finished before July 1, 1994, and board certification alone qualifies anyone who finished before July 1, 1983.

You also need to pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination (PANCE), given by the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA), and you must hold current NCCPA certification when you apply.² If your NCCPA certification has lapsed and you have not actively practiced within the past four years, Florida will require you to retake the PANCE before it will consider your application.¹

The Initial Application

The initial license fee totals $305, of which $100 is non-refundable.¹ That figure is made up of a $100 application fee, a $200 initial licensure fee, and a $5 unlicensed activity fee.³

You will need to be fingerprinted through an approved LiveScan vendor so the Florida Department of Law Enforcement can run a criminal background check. The screening fee is yours to pay.⁴ As of July 1, 2025, background screening is required at renewal as well as at initial licensure, so your prints will need to stay on file with FDLE throughout your career.⁵

Along with the fee and fingerprints, you must submit official verification of your PA degree, license verifications from every state where you hold or have held a medical license, a self-query from the National Practitioner Data Bank, and documentation for anything you answer “yes” to on the application, such as a prior criminal offense or disciplinary action.⁶

Endorsement for PAs Licensed in Another State

If you already hold a PA license elsewhere, Florida’s mobile endorsement pathway under Section 456.0145 lets you bypass some of the standard hurdles. To qualify, all of the following must be true:

Your current license in another state, the District of Columbia, or a U.S. territory is active and unencumbered.
You have passed a national licensure exam or hold NCCPA certification.
You have actively practiced as a PA for at least two of the four years immediately before applying.
You have not been reported to the National Practitioner Data Bank (unless the report was removed on appeal or involved conduct that would not violate Florida law), are not the subject of an active disciplinary proceeding, and have had no disciplinary action taken against you in the past five years.

The endorsement application fee is the same $305 as a standard initial license.⁷

Supervision and Prescribing Conditions on Your License

Florida treats the PA as a dependent practitioner. Your authority to practice flows from a supervising physician who must provide responsible supervision and control, meaning either physical presence or easy availability, including by phone or other telecommunication. A single physician may supervise up to ten licensed PAs at a time and is personally liable for the PA’s acts and omissions. Supervising physicians are not required to review or cosign PA-prepared charts.⁸

When you start a new job or change supervising physicians, you must notify the Department of Health in writing within 30 days by filing a Supervision Data Form with the Council on Physician Assistants.⁹

Prescribing is a delegated authority, not automatic. Your supervising physician must notify the Department of Health of the delegation on an approved form before you can prescribe. The Council on Physician Assistants maintains a formulary of drugs PAs cannot prescribe at all, including general anesthetics and radiographic contrast materials. Schedule II controlled substances are capped at a 7-day supply. Schedule II psychiatric medications for patients under 18 are capped at a 14-day supply and only when the supervising physician is a psychiatrist, pediatrician, family practice physician, or internal medicine physician.¹⁰

Renewing Your License

Every Florida PA license expires at midnight on January 31 of each even-numbered year. Because the whole state renews at once, your first cycle may run short or long depending on when you were originally licensed: licenses issued before September of an odd year expire the following January 31, and licenses issued after September get a longer first period.¹¹

The fee depends on how late you are:

Before expiration: $355
Delinquent (after expiration): $705
More than 120 days after the delinquent notice: $1,060

Add $100 if you are registered to dispense medications. A $43.25 fingerprint retention fee also applies at renewal when your prints are due for re-retention that cycle.¹²

Continuing Education for Renewal

Renewal requires 100 hours of continuing medical education during the two-year cycle. At least 50 must be Category I; the remaining 50 can be Category I, Category II, or a mix.¹³ Current NCCPA certification satisfies 98 of those hours, leaving you to complete the required 2 hours on prevention of medical errors and any other mandated topics that fall due that cycle.¹⁴

Florida-mandated topics apply regardless of NCCPA status:

Prevention of medical errors: 2 hours every biennial renewal.
Domestic violence: 2 hours every third biennium.
HIV/AIDS: 1 hour of Category I CME, required only at your first renewal.
Controlled substance prescribing (prescribing PAs only): 10 hours in the supervising physician’s specialty area, including 3 hours on safe prescribing of controlled substances, every renewal.

The medical errors and domestic violence courses can be Category I or Category II. The HIV/AIDS course must be Category I.¹⁵

What Happens If Your License Lapses

Missing the January 31 deadline does not cancel your license outright, but it does push you into delinquent status with escalating fees. You must apply to return to active or inactive status before the end of the current licensure cycle. Miss that window and your license becomes null and void automatically, with no further action from the Board or Department.¹¹

Reactivating a license that has been inactive for two or more consecutive biennial cycles is heavier work. You must supply license verifications from every state where you hold a PA license, submit a statement of your medical activities since going inactive, and complete the Florida-mandated CME courses for each biennium you were out. If you have not practiced as a PA for at least two of the past four years, you must obtain NCCPA recertification and then practice under direct physician supervision for a full year.¹³

Practicing Without a License

Holding yourself out as a physician assistant without a license from the Council on Physician Assistants and approval from the Department of Health is a third-degree felony in Florida, punishable by imprisonment under the state’s general sentencing framework and a fine of up to $5,000.¹⁰

1
Florida Board of Medicine. Physician Assistant (PA)
2
National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants. Become Certified
3
Legal Information Institute. Florida Administrative Code 64B8-30.019 – Fees Regarding Physician Assistants
4
Florida Board of Medicine. Electronic Fingerprinting
5
FL HealthSource. Background Screening
6
Florida Board of Medicine. Process – Supporting Documents for Licensure
7
Florida Board of Medicine. General Requirements PA for MOBILE Endorsement
8
Florida Senate. Florida Code 458 – 347 Physician Assistants
9
Florida Board of Medicine. Supervision Data Form
10
Florida Senate. Florida Code 458.347 – Physician Assistants
11
Florida Board of Medicine. Physician Assistant (PA) Renewal
12
Florida Board of Medicine. Renewal Fees
13
Legal Information Institute. Florida Administrative Code 64B8-30.005 – Physician Assistant Licensure Renewal and Reactivation
14
Florida Board of Medicine. CME PA
15
Florida Board of Medicine. CME Requirements for Renewal of Physician Assistant License