Medical assistant certification in Maine

Under Maine law, doctors may hand off duties to their staff when those duties follow custom and usage, happen under the doctor's control and call for no license. It's the physician's job to confirm that staff have proper training and do their work safely. The rule itself appears in Maine's statute on delegation.

By custom and usage, the law means duties people have long and commonly handed off. Examples from the state's medical and osteopathic boards include scheduling, charting portions of visits and measuring vital signs.

Legally, the delegating physician answers for your actions, and the law views you as acting on that physician's behalf. This explains why training matters so much to employers. A program with supervised clinical practice gives you a chance to learn and practice the work employers may ask you to do.

According to the boards, control by a physician may be direct (on-site) or indirect (remote or through telehealth).

Signed on April 16, 2026, LD 2233 merges the medical and osteopathic boards into a single Maine Board of Medicine as of January 1, 2027. On that same date, a new section 20151 begins and refers to medical assistants by name. From then on, both physicians and physician associates may hand off work to you under the same conditions: the tasks must be customary, require no license and come with adequate training.

X-ray work can't be handed to a medical assistant by a physician, since it calls for a radiologic technology license. The state of Maine licenses this work through the Radiologic Technology Board of Examiners, for example the Limited Radiographer license. To earn it, you need at least a 75% on the ARRT limited scope exam.

The joint board rule Chapter 15, from 2026, covers medical spas, IV hydration clinics and medical aesthetic practices. Under it, licensees may not hand medication administration, diagnosis or prescribing to staff without licenses. If one of these workplaces is your goal, plan on those restrictions.

With no state license in place, employers judge you by your training. Among the 1,094 programs on this site, CAAHEP or ABHES accredits 484 of them.

With online programs, coursework happens through distance education, while supervised clinical practice still takes place in person. There are 30 programs on the site you can finish this way, and 14 hold accreditation.

As of May 2025, medical assistants earned a median of $45,690 per year, which works out to $21.97 hourly. Nursing assistants, by comparison, earned $42,260, and phlebotomists earned $45,230. Licensed practical nurses earned $64,400 a year.

Ask each school whether it is accredited by CAAHEP or ABHES, how long the program takes, and where you'd do your in-person clinical hours. Most career-school programs take about 9 months, so the sooner you ask, the sooner you could finish. Head to the Maine program page to pick a program and send your request.