Renewal Requirements

Decisions regarding CCHI’s certification renewal requirements are reached after regular and thorough reviews of the professional practice, consultations with CCHI Advisors, and input from our certificants and other stakeholders.

The following external factors contribute to the Commissioners’ decisions regarding the length for the certification validity and the type of certification renewal requirements.

Pace of the profession’s change
The profession established its first national code of ethics in 2004, and it first standards of practice in 2005 (http://www.ncihc.org/resources). In 2016, the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care (NCIHC), after a number of focus group discussions, decided not to undertake the review of either documents since both were found relevant to the current situation. NCIHC published a more detailed guidance for its Advocacy standard in 2021.  In 2025, NCIHC is undergoing review of their national code of ethics.

Pace of change regarding national language access policies
Language Access regulations have been addressed by the government primarily in Executive Orders 13166 (2000), 14224 (2025), the CLAS Standards (2000, 2013), and Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010, 2016, 2020, 2024).

Practice profession

Healthcare interpreting is a practice profession, thus, CCHI expects that our certificants work in the field as a condition for their credential renewal. The minimum active working hours requirement was established so that it could be reasonably met by interpreters of any language or modality.

Certification maintenance requirements of other interpreting specialties

• Interpreters for the Deaf. The certification credentials by RID are valid for 4 years; 80 CE hours are required.
• Court interpreters. Most state court interpreter certification renewal requirements regarding credential validity vary from 1-3 years; 9-30 CE hours are required; various work/interpreting requirements.

Rationale for the performance-based (PB) CE requirement

Commissioners conduct regular review of research on acquiring and maintaining interpreting skills. The current understanding is that interpreting skills, especially simultaneous, deteriorate if not utilized regularly.

Rationale for the special LOTE CE requirement for the CoreCHI-Performance™ certificants

The performance ETOE Interpreting exam tests cognitive interpreting skills in a monolingual, English-only format. And while all candidates must meet the Language Proficiency in LOTE eligibility requirement, CCHI feels it necessary to have an additional mechanism of confirming adequate language proficiency in LOTE. To that effect, the ETOE exam includes an unscored item in which candidates record their description of a healthcare-related image in their LOTE. Because there are very limited interpreting training opportunities in the U.S. for languages other than Spanish, CCHI utilizes these recordings for anonymous peer-review as part of certification renewal process. Through this activity, certificants will practice their listening comprehension skills in LOTE (when they are reviewing someone else’s recording) and receive anonymous peer-feedback (on their own recording) that would allow them to pursue additional training if needed. With time, CCHI will build up a cohort of qualified language proficiency reviewers for language-concordant feedback for interpreters of many languages who are currently not receiving any LOTE-related feedback about their performance on the job (e.g., interpreters of such languages as Bosnian, Burmese, Farsi, Japanese, Pashto, Ukrainian, etc.). This continued engagement with certificants related to their mastery of LOTE will instill more confidence in this credential in stakeholders.

Rationales for the Interactive Ethics CE Requirement

Ethical conduct is fundamental to every healthcare profession. By requiring ethics training, CCHI reinforces that interpreters are integral members of the healthcare team who are held to the same high standards of professional conduct. This requirement ensures that certificants can effectively navigate complex ethical dilemmas, stay current on professional standards, and maintain the trust of both consumers and the public.

This CE requirement also aligns with the standards of some state court interpreter and medical interpreter programs. For example, both Oregon and Washington – the only two states in the U.S. that legislate/regulate medical interpreting – mandate ethics CE for their certification maintenance.

The interactivity of the ethics training will ensure that certificants continue to maintain and improve their critical thinking and decision-making skills needed to move beyond theoretical knowledge.