If you are a Registered nurse in Ohio, you were required to renew your nursing license by August 31, 2015. This year, all renewals are required to be filed online. This caused many problems for nurses who could not access the Board’s online renewal system, did not have their access code and password,  or who responded “Yes” to any of the renewal questions.

Nurses who responded “Yes” to any of the renewal questions were not renewed by the Board, but were requested to supplement their renewal with a written explanation and documents to support the affirmative response. Until the nurse submitted the supplemental information to the Nursing Board, their renewal was considered “incomplete” and their license was not renewed.

On September 1, 2015, if your nursing license was not renewed, it expired. You May NOT work as a nurse until your nursing license has been renewed!

As you can imagine, in the days leading up to the August 31 expiration date, the Nursing Board was swamped with nurses attempting to renew their licenses. Given the volume, many licenses were not renewed. This is the message that was issued by the Nursing Board:

From the OBN website:

ALERT: eLicense Renewal System, August 31, 2015

Due to an Ohio eLicense systems issue, some registered nurses who submitted renewal information on or about August 31, 2015, have not been processed. If a license credential indicates “ACTIVE IN RENEWAL – INCOMPLETE”, the license renewal application should be processed by 5:00 pm on September 2, 2015. If you have questions about a license in this status after August 31, please email: incompleterenewal2@nursing.ohio.gov. The State IT group is working diligently to resolve this system issue. We regret the difficulties you are experiencing.

In the future, we highly encourage nurses to complete their renewals in June or July and not wait until the week their license is set to expire.

As always, if you have any questions about this post or the Ohio Board of Nursing in general, please contact one of the attorneys at the Collis Law Group at 614-486-3909 or email me at Beth@collislaw.com.