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Amazon or Apple? Making Your CME Budget Work Harder With the Gift-Card Add-On

The gift-card add-on is one of the most-asked-about features of our CME packages, so here’s a plain guide to using it well. When you buy a course like the PANRE Review Course, you can add a gift card to the same order — your choice of Amazon or Apple, in an amount from $100 to $1,500. The course is real CME (100 hours of AAPA Category 1 credit), and the gift card is spendable value that comes back to you.

Amazon or Apple? Pick by where you actually spend. Amazon is the flexible default — books, equipment, household, nearly anything. Apple makes sense if you live in that ecosystem: apps, devices, accessories, subscriptions. There’s no wrong answer; it’s about which card you’ll get full use from.

How much? Size it to your available allowance. If your employer reimburses up to a set CME amount each year, choose an add-on that brings your order near that ceiling so you capture the full benefit rather than leaving it on the table. The key is spending money that would otherwise expire — the add-on turns a use-it-or-lose-it balance into board prep plus a card you keep.

A few practicalities: confirm your employer’s reimbursement rules before you buy, keep the CME documentation the course provides for your submission, and repeat each cycle if your allowance renews annually. Used this way, the add-on isn’t a gimmick — it’s a legitimate way to extract full value from a benefit you’ve earned. The course is $399.99 for 30 months of access.

Add a gift card to your PANRE order →

About the Author

Jeremy Boroff, PA-C — Emergency Medicine physician assistant with 24 years of clinical EM experience as a PA-C, plus an additional 7 years of experience as a Registered Respiratory Therapist. Author, PA educator, and CME developer — creator of the PANRE, PANCE, EOR, and specialty CME review courses at CME Review Courses.