Accreditation Actions Against Health-Professions Programs

Written by Zachary Gaynor, attorney · The Florida Bar, admitted 2016 · court admissions. Reviewed 3 September 2026.

What does it mean if my program is on accreditation probation?

It means the accreditor has formally found the program out of compliance with its own standards. It does not invalidate your degree, and it is not a defense to a dismissal. What it does is make the program’s compliance with its own published rules a documented, citable question — which matters when your dismissal turns on whether a rule was applied to you the way it is written.

This page sets out the current published actions across Colorado, Illinois, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wisconsin. For Florida, see the PA, nursing, pharmacy and residency pages.

Physician assistant programs — two on probation, and both findings touch students directly

Rush University (Chicago)

Placed on Accreditation-Probation in March 2024 and extended in April 2026 “due to the incomplete progress made by the program in demonstrating compliance.” Six areas of noncompliance remain, all in the self-assessment cluster. Class size raised to 40. A modified self-study is due 1 July 2027 with a focused visit before the April 2028 meeting.

Two details matter to a student. In January 2026 ARC-PA did not accept the program’s report on Standard B4.01a/b — the standard requiring frequent, objective, documented evaluation that allows the program to identify and address student deficiencies in a timely manner. That is an accreditor finding aimed squarely at how the program assesses and warns its students. And ARC-PA recorded that “the commission’s decision of extended probation is not appealable.”

College of Saint Mary (Omaha)

Placed on Accreditation-Probation in June 2025 with 18 areas of noncompliance and five new observations. The cited grounds included appointing an interim program director who did not meet ARC-PA qualifications, a lack of institutional oversight, no qualified program director knowledgeable of and responsible for compliance, and failure to submit required reports. The program did not appeal. A September 2025 warning letter addressed “the lack of a program director for almost 12 months.”

The July 2026 focused visit left four areas outstanding — and one of them is unusually relevant here: Standard A3.17d, where ARC-PA found the program “lacked evidence student academic records… are readily accessible to authorized program personnel and include documentation of remediation efforts and outcomes.”

That is an accreditor finding that the program’s own record of remediation was deficient. In a dismissal that rests on a failed remediation, the question of what the program actually documented is no longer speculative. The 2024 cohort’s PANCE pass rate was also recorded at 85 per cent or below. This is the program’s third probation since 2019; on the first, in March 2019, it appealed and the Reconsideration Review Panel upheld the commission.

Provisional is not probation. Chamberlain Chicago, an Illinois program, holds Accreditation-Provisional, which is simply where every new program starts. Provisional and probation look similar on a list and mean opposite things.

Pharmacy — Chicago State’s history is the one to know

Fourteen PharmD programs operate across the five states. Only one carries a current citation, and its history is the substantive part.

Chicago State University was Accredited with Probation from 2019-20 through 2022-23. During that period ACPE cited Standard 17 — Progression — as Partially Compliant, which is the standard governing how students advance through the program. In 2024-25 it recorded a NON-COMPLIANT finding on Standard 18 (faculty and staff, quantitative factors), downgraded from partially compliant the previous action. It is currently Partially Compliant on Standard 5 (Faculty and Staff) following the 2025-26 comprehensive review.

When ACPE removed the probation in June 2023 it stated that the partial-compliance findings rested “on the basis of the program’s NAPLEX pass rate… which may indicate a lack of the necessary foundational knowledge, content delivery, and/or assessment.”

A numbering caution that matters if you are reading these yourself: ACPE replaced its 2016 standards with Standards 2025, effective 1 July 2025, collapsing to seven standards. Under the new numbering Standard 4 is “Students and Student Services” and Standard 5 is “Faculty and Staff.” Older citations use the previous numbering, so a “Standard 4” finding from 2018 is not the same standard as a “Standard 4” finding today. No PharmD program in these five states currently carries a Standard 4 citation, and none is on probation.

Nursing — what each state actually publishes, and what it does not

This is where the honest answer differs sharply by state, and where most published summaries go wrong.

New Mexico is the only one of the five publishing a program on Conditional Approval: Pima Medical Institute’s practical-nursing program in Albuquerque, expiring 28 February 2027. Several other programs carry Initial Approval, which is the ordinary starting status.
Colorado publishes an explicit conditional-approval category — and no program currently carries it. Eleven programs are marked Interim Approval, which simply means new and pre-first-graduation.
Wisconsin marks only two programs, both Arizona College of Nursing sites, as authorized to admit or to plan but not yet Board approved. None is published as conditionally approved or on probation, though the administrative code does provide for conditional approval.
Nebraska publishes exactly two values — Continual and Initial. There is no published adverse or conditional category at all. Four programs are Initial.
Illinois publishes nothing at program level. Its list carries a single banner stating that all programs have current approval. A program actually on probation appears on that list indistinguishable from one in good standing. Illinois separately publishes five years of per-program NCLEX pass rates and marks programs closed or revoked — but a pass rate below threshold is not itself a published finding of probation, and we do not treat it as one.

The caveat that applies to every state: these lists publish status, not the statutory ground. To establish why a program is in a given status you need the Board’s order or its meeting minutes. We have not inferred a reason for any program, and neither should anyone else.

The NCLEX thresholds differ, and they are worth knowing because they are the most common route to an action: Colorado 75% (3 CCR 716-1), Illinois 75% (68 Ill. Adm. Code § 1300.230(b)(3)(A), with two consecutive years below triggering a site visit and probation), Nebraska 80% (172 Neb. Admin. Code ch. 97), New Mexico 80% (16.12.3.12(F) NMAC, with a 75% exception for certain public institutions), Wisconsin 80% (Wis. Admin. Code § N 1.09(2), with an improvement plan due within 45 days).

Residency and fellowship — who lets you read the rules before you sign

ACGME requires every sponsoring institution to have a resident due-process and grievance policy. It does not require them to publish it. Across these five states the split is stark.

Published and readable: University of Colorado School of Medicine (its remediation, disciplinary action and grievance policy) · HCA HealthONE (through the HCA system core manual) · Denver Health · McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern, which posts a standalone probation, suspension, non-renewal, non-promotion and dismissal policy and is the best public set in the group · Loyola University Medical Center · UNMC (its House Staff Manual carries the due-process section) · Creighton (a public policy index, though the documents themselves are portal-hosted).

Not published:

University of New Mexico — which is effectively New Mexico’s entire GME sector, holding 74 of the state’s 80 accredited programs and 737 of roughly 784 residents. Its GME resources sit behind a portal and no institutional due-process policy is public.
MCW Affiliated Hospitals and UW Hospitals and Clinics — Wisconsin’s two dominant sponsors, together 185 of the state’s programs and 1,718 residents. MCWAH names the relevant policies on a public page and then states they live on an intranet requiring a login; UW directs residents to log in to MedHub.
University of Chicago, Rush and University of Illinois publish the agreement but not the grievance policy it points to. Aurora Health Care publishes a sample agreement whose due-process clause points to a policy that is not public.

If you are a resident at one of those, the practical step is the same: request the policy manual in force on the date of the action, in writing, from the Designated Institutional Official, and keep the request. A sponsor that will not produce the rule it is applying to you is in a weak position on that point.

ACGME probation in these states

At institutional level there are only three sponsoring institutions on Probationary Accreditation nationwide, and one of them is in New Mexico: the Taos Orthopaedic Institute and Research Foundation.

At program level, of twenty-one nationally, these five states hold: University of Colorado dermatology in Aurora (with its micrographic surgery and pediatric dermatology programs carrying administrative probationary status because of it); Mount Sinai Hospital Medical Center of Chicago / Jackson Park family medicine; Southern Illinois University endocrinology in Springfield; Rush University nuclear medicine; and Medical College of Wisconsin integrated plastic surgery. None in Nebraska.

Unlike ARC-PA, ACGME does not publish the grounds for a probation — only the status. So a program’s probation tells you a review is underway; it does not tell you what was found.

Dental schools

Seven CODA-accredited predoctoral programs across the five states: University of Colorado (Aurora) · Midwestern University (Downers Grove) · Southern Illinois University (Alton) · University of Illinois Chicago · Creighton (Omaha) · UNMC College of Dentistry (Lincoln) · Marquette (Milwaukee). New Mexico has no predoctoral dental school — UNM has a dental medicine department with a residency and hygiene program only.

CODA’s published accreditation notices show no withdrawal, probation or intent to withdraw for any of the seven. One transparency limit worth stating: CODA’s program database is not machine-readable, so the list above was built from the ADEA institutional roster cross-checked against CODA’s own notices, and individual programs’ specific CODA status strings could not be verified.

How to use any of this

An accreditation action is context, not a claim. Used well it does three things: it tells you which documents to ask for, it makes it harder for a program to assert that its student processes are sound, and it can support a request that a decision be looked at more closely. Used badly — as an argument that the program is bad and therefore your dismissal was wrong — it does nothing at all.

The questions it makes worth asking are concrete. Did the progression standard change after you enrolled? When were you told? Was the standard applied to you the same one applied to the cohort before you? What does your own file actually document about remediation, and does it match what the program says happened?

Osteopathic students: Osteopathic medical school dismissal — the rules every DO program runs on covers the COCA accreditation elements a college of osteopathic medicine must publish and follow, the COMLEX-USA attempt limits and how school caps differ from the NBOME’s, the six-year completion clock, how student progress committees are structured, and what the law gives a dismissed DO student at a public school and at a private one.

Common questions

Does my program being on probation help my case?

Not by itself, and it is not a defense. It makes the program’s compliance with its own published rules a documented question, which is useful when your dismissal turns on how a rule was applied.

Will probation affect my license or my board exam eligibility?

No. A program on probation remains accredited or approved, and its students remain eligible to sit their examinations. The risk is that an unresolved probation can end in withdrawal of accreditation, which is why keeping your own transcripts, clinical hours and evaluations matters.

How do I find out why my program was placed on probation?

It depends on the accreditor. ARC-PA publishes a detailed accreditation history naming the standards cited. ACPE publishes standards and board actions. ACGME publishes status only. State nursing boards publish status only, and the ground has to come from the Board’s order or minutes, which are public records.

My state’s board list shows nothing. Does that mean no program is on probation?

Not necessarily. Illinois, for example, publishes only that all listed programs have current approval — a program on probation appears identical to one in good standing. Absence from a published list is not evidence of absence of an action.