Center for Health Care Services Created a Culture of Compliance Using Relias

Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, the Center for Health Care Services (CHCS) serves several populations across San Antonio and surrounding areas in Bexar County. With over 20 locations, including clinics, throughout this service area, CHCS provides over 80 unique programs. Their offerings include:

• Adult and child behavioral health services
• Substance use treatment, counseling, and residential programs
• Integrated care programs
• Crisis response services
• Mental health and substance use services for the homeless
• Supported employment and housing assistance
• IDD programs that include day programs and group homes
• Early childhood intervention (ECI) services

With such a wide variety of populations to serve, CHCS turned to Relias to help make training its staff easier. To learn more about why CHCS partnered with Relias, we spoke with Lynn Spomer, LPC, Senior Program Support Analyst. Spomer has been with CHCS since 2003 and part of its training team since 2004. As such, she has worked with Relias since the beginning of the partnership with CHCS and has overseen the many positive changes Relias has helped to bring to her team.

An easy-to-use platform

With so many staff members in need of such varied types of training, CHCS needed a platform that could help to simplify its training processes. By leveraging the Relias Platform, CHCS leadership has created a system that streamlines administrative duties and makes training more convenient for staff to complete. Spomer noted three characteristics of the Relias Platform that have made a marked difference in training efforts:

• Ease of setup
• Ease of user upload
• Automatic enrollment into training plans

Using the Relias Platform, CHCS has been able to easily create courses and training plans for new hires, compliance standards, and role-specific training requirements, as well as set up user profiles. Administrators can then automatically enroll staff members into training and track staff’s progress through this training, all from within the Relias Platform.

The Relias Platform has also helped to make training more convenient for staff. Rather than attending all in-person training events, staff can now take hybrid or online training. This allows staff members to access their training at times that are most convenient for them in the location they prefer. Spomer also noted that the variety of content included in Relias’ course libraries allows staff members across a wide array of specialties to receive all the training they need within Relias.

We do so many different programs, and Relias had something to meet every need,” Spomer said.

Using Relias to maintain CCBHC designation

When CHCS partnered with Relias, it not only needed a platform that could make training more convenient, but also a platform that met specific training requirements. As a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic (CCBHC), CHCS needed a better way to provide compliance training as well as training that matched the particular needs of their community, such as working with military members.

Using the Relias Platform, CHCS created the training programs it needed to achieve and maintain the CCBHC designation. “There’s so many very specific training requirements that being a CCBHC requires,” Spomer said. “But we didn’t have to create anything fresh. With Relias they were already there in the platform.”

With the courses that came with Relias libraries, CHCS designed training around military matters, cultural sensitivity, and variations in care that staff needed in order to remain compliant with CCBHC standards.

When it comes time for compliance audits or when administrators need to see who has completed assigned compliance training, Spomer and her team can pull these reports from Relias “…in a matter of minutes.”

Combining this ease of reporting with the easy-to-use nature of the Relias Platform, CHCS has achieved and maintained its CCBHC designation.

Working with Relias to further organizational culture

Looking ahead, CHCS wants to continue to make strides in its organizational culture by building out organizational learning. For Spomer and her team, this means working with Relias to move training beyond one-off compliance training to a true culture of compliance.

To begin with, CHCS has started to integrate Relias into staff members’ training process from their first day on the job. From day one, each staff member has required training assigned in the Relias Platform. This allows everyone at CHCS to become fluent in the Relias Platform and understand how it can help them meet their training needs.

“ We do so many different programs, and Relias had something to meet every need.”
– Lynn Spomer, LPC, Senior Program Support Analyst

For Spomer and her team, however, a culture of compliance means doing more than compliance-based training. “We’re really trying to push our staff to use more of the electives,” she said. In this way, CHCS hopes to create a thirst for learning within the organization while increasing the level of care provided to persons served.

As CHCS continues the work to implement these new policies, Spomer and her team know they can rely on Relias for any necessary support. Since partnering with Relias, CHCS has worked with Customer Success Managers to successfully implement new features and troubleshoot issues.

“I have never had a bad experience with a Relias employee,” Spomer said. “Relias has some of the greatest, sweetest, most knowledgeable employees I’ve ever dealt with in any company.”