For most programs, the Sixth Edition is less a rewrite than a re-weighting. The familiar architecture — administration, curriculum, and evaluation — is intact, but the burden of proof has shifted further toward continuous, documented self-assessment. The single biggest structural change: the Fifth Edition's Appendix 14 self-study template is gone, and the work it organized now lives across the Section C standards. This guide orients you to the whole edition; each linked article goes deep on one piece.
Insights · Accreditation
The ARC-PA Sixth Edition: A PA Program's Guide to Compliance
What changed, how the standards are organized, where programs get cited, and what the self-study report and site visit actually require — written for the people responsible for accreditation.
Talk to our team about your self-studyThe Short Answer
What is the ARC-PA Sixth Edition?
In brief
The ARC-PA Sixth Edition is the current set of accreditation standards for physician assistant (PA) programs, published by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA) and effective September 1, 2025. It updates the Fifth Edition — addressing telehealth, evolving preceptor roles, and competency-based education — while embedding program evaluation more deeply across the standards.
Fifth Edition → Sixth Edition
What changed from the Fifth Edition?
The core structure held; the emphasis moved. The changes that matter most to programs preparing for review:
| Area | Fifth Edition | Sixth Edition |
|---|---|---|
| The Self-Study Report | A structured Appendix 14 template organized the SSR's evaluation tables. | Appendix 14 is retired; evaluative responsibilities are embedded across the Section C standards. |
| Program evaluation | Self-assessment framed largely around the periodic self-study exercise. | Self-assessment expected as a continuous, everyday program operation — not a single reporting event. |
| Principal faculty | Board certification and licensure expectations with less specificity on program support. | Programs cover principal faculty board certification and licensure; PA-C emeritus status is permitted. |
| Medical director & preceptors | Current certification generally required. | Medical directors and preceptors may be currently or previously certified. |
| Curriculum emphasis | — | Added emphasis on telehealth, evolving practice models, competency-based education, and personal wellness instruction. |
Reflects the ARC-PA Standards, Sixth Edition (effective September 1, 2025). Programs should confirm specifics against the current ARC-PA Standards, Crosswalk, and Compliance Manual; ARC-PA is the authoritative source.
How the Standards Are Organized
The standards, by domain.
The Sixth Edition runs from Section A through Section E. Programs seeking continuing accreditation are measured primarily against A, B, and C.
ASection
Administration
Governs the program's relationship with its sponsoring institution — leadership, organizational structure, faculty and staff resources, finances, and operations. It is the structural backbone the rest of the standards rest on, and where insufficient resources or unclear authority surface first.
BSection
Curriculum & Instruction
Defines what programs must teach and how they must document it, in four subsections: B1 spans the entire curriculum, B2 centers on the didactic phase, B3 governs the clinical (supervised clinical practice) phase, and B4 covers cross-cutting curricular requirements that apply throughout.
CSection
Program Evaluation
The engine of continuous readiness — and where MACS's analytical work concentrates. Programs must run an ongoing self-assessment: collect data, analyze it critically, draw conclusions that name strengths and areas in need of improvement, and act on them. The Sixth Edition treats this as everyday operation, not a pre-visit scramble.
Going deeper (cluster articles): the five questions of C1.01 · the two questions of C1.02 · how to define an ANI · writing the Self-Study Report · faculty sufficiency & workload · the qualitative-data shift.
DSection
Provisional Accreditation Requirements
The additional expectations a new program must meet on the provisional pathway, from initial application through the provisional monitoring and final provisional visits. See the Building a PA Program pillar for the new-program lifecycle.
ESection
Accreditation Maintenance
The reporting and notification obligations that run between site visits — keeping the program in good standing as personnel, class size, and resources change over an accreditation cycle.
Where Programs Get Cited
The most-cited standards.
If you are preparing for review, this is where the risk concentrates.
Under the Fifth Edition, ARC-PA's published review data consistently showed the Section C program-evaluation standards among the most frequently cited — with C1.03 the single most common, appearing in roughly two-thirds of the 163 programs reviewed in the December 2024 data, and often pulling related findings into C1.02. The Sixth Edition removed Standard C1.03: institutional-resource adequacy is now addressed under the Section A standards rather than in the self-study report. But the risk did not go away — it moved. The self-assessment expectations behind those citations now live in C1.01 and C1.02, and the failure pattern is unchanged. It is rarely about effort. It is almost always a self-assessment process that is real but not fully documented, or documented but not linked to action.
A common finding: the program did not prepare a self-study report that consistently documented the program's process of ongoing data analysis and linked the data analysis to data-driven conclusions with subsequent identification of program strengths, areas in need of improvement, and action plans. — Paraphrased from ARC-PA continuing-accreditation review findings
Fixing this is a remediation problem more than a writing problem. Our Accreditation Findings & Remediation pillar covers the most common citations standard by standard, why they happen, and how to respond to probation or focused review.
The Process
The self-study report & the site visit.
The Self-Study Report (SSR) is the written record of a program's ongoing self-assessment. It presents samples of multi-year data on the program's overall effectiveness and the sufficiency of its personnel, the program's critical analysis of that data, and the action plans that follow. Under the Sixth Edition, programs build that documentation around the Section C standards rather than the retired Appendix 14 template.
The site visit follows. A site visit team's job is to verify, validate, and clarify what the program reported in its application materials — typically across two days. A strong SSR is one a site visitor can confirm rather than question; the work is won in the years of documentation before the team arrives, not the week before.
How to build evidence year-round instead of scrambling is the subject of our Assessment Systems, Data & Continuous Readiness pillar.
Watch the Working Sessions
The Section C standards, worked on screen.
Scott Massey walks the two program-evaluation standards that drive most citations — question by question, with real (anonymized) program data. Free replays with chapter navigation, written summaries, and full transcripts.
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Replay · Standard C1.01
ARC-PA C1.01: When to Choose Compliant vs. ANI (All 5 Questions)
A repeatable, defensible process for the five self-study questions — choosing data, triangulating it, and deciding when a finding truly rises to an area needing improvement.
Watch the replay →
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Replay · Standard C1.02
ARC-PA C1.02: Building a Defensible Case for Faculty & Staff Sufficiency
The two C1.02 questions beneath the surface — capacity, workload calculations, faculty attrition, the institution's role, and when insufficiency becomes an ANI.
Watch the replay →Frequently Asked
ARC-PA Sixth Edition: common questions.
What is the ARC-PA Sixth Edition?+
The ARC-PA Sixth Edition is the current set of accreditation standards for physician assistant (PA) programs, published by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA) and effective September 1, 2025. It updates the Fifth Edition, addressing telehealth, evolving preceptor roles, and competency-based education while embedding program evaluation more deeply across the standards.
When did the ARC-PA Sixth Edition take effect?+
The ARC-PA Standards, Sixth Edition, were published August 18, 2025 and took effect September 1, 2025. ARC-PA also released a Crosswalk document mapping the changes from the Fifth Edition and an updated Compliance Manual. Programs are now reviewed against the Sixth Edition, so older Fifth Edition guidance should be treated as out of date.
What changed from the Fifth Edition to the Sixth Edition?+
The Sixth Edition keeps the core structure but updates several areas: it retires the Appendix 14 self-study template and embeds evaluation across the Section C standards, treats self-assessment as continuous program operation, and revises faculty, medical director, and preceptor requirements. It also adds emphasis on telehealth, evolving practice models, competency-based education, and personal wellness instruction.
What happened to Appendix 14 in the Sixth Edition?+
The Sixth Edition no longer includes the structured Appendix 14 template that organized the Fifth Edition Self-Study Report. The evaluative responsibilities it once held are now embedded across the Section C program-evaluation standards. Programs must still document ongoing self-assessment, but they build that documentation around the C standards rather than a single fixed template.
What are the most frequently cited ARC-PA standards?+
Under the Fifth Edition, ARC-PA's published review data consistently showed the Section C program-evaluation standards among the most frequently cited, with C1.03 the single most common — appearing in roughly two-thirds of the 163 programs reviewed in the December 2024 data and often pulling related findings into C1.02. The Sixth Edition removed Standard C1.03 (institutional-resource adequacy is now addressed under the Section A standards), but the self-assessment expectations behind those citations now live in C1.01 and C1.02. Most citations trace back to a self-assessment process that is not fully documented or not linked to action.
What is the Self-Study Report (SSR)?+
The Self-Study Report is the written record of a PA program's ongoing self-assessment. It presents samples of multi-year data on the program's effectiveness and the sufficiency of its personnel, the program's critical analysis of that data, and the action plans that follow. A site visit team later verifies, validates, and clarifies what the program reported.
How are the ARC-PA Sixth Edition standards organized?+
The Sixth Edition is organized into sections: Section A (Administration), Section B (Curriculum and Instruction, in subsections B1 to B4), Section C (Program Evaluation), Section D (Provisional Accreditation Requirements), and Section E (Accreditation Maintenance). Programs seeking continuing accreditation are evaluated primarily against the A, B, and C standards.
How MACS Helps
You don't have to read the standards alone.
Our team has sat on both sides of the table — former ARC-PA commissioners and site-visit chairs, founding program directors, and the researchers behind the data methods programs now lean on. We work a program's self-study section by section, pressure-test the evidence the way a site visitor will, and build a self-assessment process that keeps running after we leave.
If you are mapping your timeline to the Sixth Edition, start with a conversation.
Latest in This Pillar
Go deeper on the Sixth Edition.
Focused, bylined articles — one standard, one question at a time.
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