Americare Builds Custom Content to Optimize Person-Centered Care and Uphold High Standards Jean Summers, Senior Vice President, Assisted Living Division, Americare Senior Living Background Founded in 1981, Americare is a family operated senior care provider based in Missouri. They employ more than 3,500 employees and serve nearly 3,600 seniors across five states. Americare’s skilled nursing, assisted living, and memory care communities rank among the top 100 providers nationally. Americare has been a client of Relias (formerly Silverchair Learning Systems) since 2008. Challenge Americare utilizes a proprietary customer service program entitled, “Hometown Hospitality.” This program offers valuable customer service training for everyone in the organization. A key component of their program is their Hometown Hospitality Pledge course. Every employee (including all members of the leadership team) is required to take the course at orientation (in the first 30 days) and then annually. This course was initially developed ten years ago; thus, Americare recognized the need to update the content to better engage the adult learner. After attending the Relias Impact Nation conference and previewing our state-of-the-art, interactive course options, Americare quickly selected Relias to customize and revamp their content. Solution After discussing with her Client Success Manager (CSM) how they wanted to improve the course, Jean Summers, Senior Vice President of the Assisted Living Division for Americare, worked with her Relias CSM to map an improvement plan for the course content. Next, the CSM connected Jean and her team with the Relias Professional Services team; they were then assigned a project manager who initiated content development and managed the project timeline. The project manager provided the Americare team an understanding of adult learning bestpractices to optimize the effectiveness of the course. “The level of [the project manager’s] expertise helped us understand how the learner would be looking at it,” Jean said. “Not only did the project manager help the Americare team involved in the project to better understand adult learning, their expertise helped us look at how the learner would engage in the process, and how to use concepts in learning that we did not even consider.” “Their expertise was tremendously beneficial.” The Relias Professional Services team took “all of our ideas to build exactly what we wanted. They offered a level of expertise we don’t have organizationally. It was great to tap into their expertise and understanding of project management, learning concepts and our Americare culture.” It took the Professional Services team four months to build the Hometown Hospitality Pledge. Jean estimates that it would have taken Americare 10-12 months to build the course themselves. The completed course, the Hometown Hospitality Pledge, was presented at Americare’s annual meeting. “There was a great takeaway from the whole leadership team,” Jean explained. Feedback from employees since rolling out the completed Hometown Hospitality Pledge course has been positive on all accounts. Employees have said they “now understand Americare culture and organizational expectations. The course helps communicate standards while giving real-life scenarios to help our communication with each employee.” “We are now able to hold everyone accountable to our high standards.” Americare believes in person-centered care, it is the heart of every Americare community and the Hometown Hospitality Pledge course helps drive this message home for each employee.