Medical assistant certification in Vermont

Vermont's Medicine chapter lets a physician pass care tasks along to an assistant or employee. Delegating simply means the physician gives you a task and stays responsible for how it's done.

No exam, program or fixed hours appear anywhere in the law. What matters is whether training, education, experience, or some combination of them makes you qualified. The physician delegating the tasks must make sure you're qualified to do them and is legally liable for how you perform them.

A physician who delegates to you carries legal liability for your work on those tasks, because you're acting as their agent. So physicians have good reason to bring on people whose preparation they can rely on.

The state also counts it as unprofessional conduct for a physician to delegate to a person they know, or ought to know, lacks the qualifications. Finishing an accredited program is a clear way to show a physician you're qualified. Open a Vermont program page, pick one accredited program, and send its Request information form so the school hears from you directly.

No, you can't. If you do tasks a physician has delegated, you don't need a physician assistant license, but that only holds while you don't present yourself as a physician assistant. Use the title medical assistant, including when you introduce yourself to patients.

Vermont classifies taking x-rays of people as radiography. Radiography is the direct application of ionizing radiation, the type an x-ray machine produces, to a person's body. You need a state radiography license to do it, unless you fall under an exemption.

Exemptions exist for licensed practitioners, some students, federal employees, certain dental staff and researchers. Medical assistants are not included. The Department of Health's Radiological Health Rule adds that in health care settings, whoever operates an x-ray machine needs a current Vermont license where one is required, and a licensed practitioner must either do the work or provide general supervision.

If you want to take x-rays of patients, you'll need a Vermont radiography license unless you qualify for an exemption, and medical assistants aren't listed among the exemptions.

Accreditation means an outside organization, CAAHEP or ABHES, has checked the program against fixed standards. Nationally, our listings cover 1,094 medical assistant programs, with 484 of them accredited. Choosing an accredited program shows a Vermont physician that your training was checked against outside standards.

Among the listed programs, 1,049 sit at schools participating in federal student aid. A medical assistant associate degree is available at 354 schools.

All figures here are drawn from data schools published themselves for the 2023-24 year.

Career school programs mostly run 7 to 9 months; that's 257 out of the 378 reporting a length. Just 19 wrap up in 6 months or less.

Distance education is an option for 30 programs, and 14 of those hold accreditation. Classes are taken by distance education, but the supervised clinical practice (the externship) is always in person.

Medical assistants earned a national median of $45,690 per year, which works out to $21.97 per hour, as of May 2025. Related jobs pay as follows.

Ready to start? On a Vermont program page, pick one accredited program from the tables and send its Request information form with your name, email, phone, ZIP code and start time. Your request goes to that school.