“The Relias Platform provided a solution to that challenge,” said Amy Alarcon, Director of Human Resources for CLC.

Founded in 1972, CLC is an award-winning, faith-based nonprofit organization headquartered in Colorado that provides engaging retirement lifestyles and dignified care for older adults. Services include independent living, assisted living, memory care, skilled nursing, rehabilitation, adult day services, and in-home care.

Onboarding team members in multiple locations

In 2019, CLC began moving its training format from in-person to online using the Relias Platform. As the organization expanded, learning and development leaders were finding it difficult to schedule employees across multiple locations for in-person training sessions.

Online training using the Relias Platform reduced CLC’s general orientation and onboarding time by 60% – from five to two hours.

CLC implemented online orientations in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit. The flexible learning platform helped the organization continue to hire and onboard team members rapidly and smoothly.

CLC continues to use Relias for training not only clinical staff but also sales staff and other teams. “There’s a general orientation that everyone receives, but then there’s a track based on their role,” said Alarcon. After the organization’s basics, learners move into training specific to their teams, with specialized onboarding for clinical workers, leaders, and sales and marketing.

“Relias is so easy to use. It’s a great platform to utilize for busy team members and busy leaders. The support we receive from our client success manager has just been phenomenal.”
— Amy Alarcon, Director of Human Resources, Christian Living Communities

Supporting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging

Onboarding is the beginning of employee engagement. The work continues with ongoing learning opportunities.

“We’re really focused on creating a culture of belonging in our organization,” said Alarcon. “Team members, residents, family members — everyone should be able to walk into the community and feel included and supported.”

CLC’s learning and development team has put together an inclusion training program called “We Belong.” Offered through the Relias Platform, the program includes training for leaders and team members involved with residents. So far, the program has focused on learning and discussions related to LGBTQ experiences, ageism, and the meaning of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Each quarter the CLC community addresses new DEI topics, and leaders seek input from community members about future topics.

The Relias digital platform has helped CLC’s DEI program be more inclusive of team members who cannot attend training in real-time. The platform also ensures consistent education, providing the same training to every learner.

Providing the tools for CLC to reach learning goals

Ensuring consistency and utilizing blended learning

For healthcare workers, it’s difficult to find time  to complete training requirements and accomplish personal learning goals.

“Our team members are so caring and so giving,” said Alarcon. “They want to spend all of their time with our residents, which is amazing. But then finding the time to step away and spend time on themselves can be difficult.” Time became a particularly scarce commodity this past year with COVID burnout and staffing shortages permeating healthcare organizations.

“It’s really hard to find that balance for training and everything else that’s expected of them on the job. Relias really helps with that because we can engage folks in different ways,” said Alarcon.

CLC records in-person training classes so that employees who miss the sessions can access the recorded courses at a time convenient for them. Alarcon said it’s nice to be able to offer blended learning with recordings, webinars, and in-person training. This helps people manage their schedules and still get the training they need  and it ensures consistency across training.

Building a culture of learning

Using the Relias platform, CLC provides annual compliance training and continuing education units (CEUs). Each department has a customized track, and the clinical team gets different training for specific roles, like certified nurse assistants, registered nurses, and licensed practical nurses. They also have three customized tracks for  leaders to ensure they get the skills and  knowledge they need.

According to Alarcon, being able to talk about  CLC’s learning program, CEU offerings, and education support during the recruiting process  for new team members is “definitely a plus.”

CLC is intentional with professional development for staff and leaders. “We want to make sure we’re using people’s time effectively,” said Alarcon, “so we make sure they get the training that is relevant and helpful to them and their roles.”

Looking to the future, Alarcon wants to take advantage of the license tracker in Relias, which simplifies keeping up with renewal dates. She also wants to initiate a program for high-potential and emerging leaders within the organization, and she’s relying on Relias solutions every step of the way.

The post Christian Living Communities Benefits From Flexibility of Relias Online Learning appeared first on Relias.

Eight years ago, Edgewood Healthcare was searching for a new learning management platform. As leaders considered their choices, they knew they needed a learning platform that met state-mandated and internal training requirements while also providing opportunities for staff to build on their knowledge and meet licensure and recertification requirements.

Edgewood Healthcare operates 64 communities across seven upper-Midwest states. The company’s 3,100 employees provide care for over 3,700 seniors across a variety of settings, including:

• Independent living
• Assisted living
• Home health
• Day services
• Outpatient therapy
• Memory care
• Hospice care

To find the optimal learning management system for their many communities’ needs, Edgewood leaders narrowed their search to two learning management platforms. Relias won hands down, not only for its ease of use but for the ability to access regulatory compliance training and create custom courses, said Corporate Education Director Hatti Olson.

It’s important to Edgewood’s leaders that staff members have access to tools that empower them to provide best-in-class senior care.

Easing Stress on Administrators and Learners

Whether the education is for onboarding, annual regulatory compliance, or professional development, an easy-to-use system is important for facilitating course assignments and completions.

Automated Assignments

For new-hire and annual compliance training, the Relias auto-enrollment feature, a favorite of Olson’s, ensures that education modules are assigned on time. This feature relieves Olson and the community supervisors of having to manually assign training plans to each employee.

When newly hired supervisors need onboarding, Olson uses the Relias platform to create supervisor training plans on how to track assignments and access company documents and resources. This reduces the back-and-forth exchange of asking for and sending instructions via email. The Relias Requirements Tracker tool allows quick insight into when supervisors and employees have reviewed their new-hire resources, so leaders can monitor progress and ensure onboarding is completed.

Engaging Content

Relias training modules engage learners with a variety of visual, verbal, and interactive content while providing the rationale behind performing procedures a certain way. The education instills confidence that they are performing their job duties to the highest standard, Olson said.

Edgewood provides on-the-job training to employees and, in some cases, assistance in becoming a certified medical assistant. Olson also pointed out that the Relias library helps licensed or certified staff maintain their status through access to accredited courses.

Olson noted that giving employees the tools to be successful, such as high-quality training plans and in some cases opportunities to advance their careers, helps staff feel appreciated. “In light of the Great Resignation, if staff members feel cared for and comfortable in their jobs, then they are more likely to want to come to work day after day and stay with the organization,” she said.

Personalized Learning

Adjusting education content to different experience levels shows respect for learners’ time and existing knowledge. Oftentimes, employees spend mandatory training hours reviewing content they already know, Olson observed. Educating staff with the sole purpose of meeting state training requirements misses the opportunity to help employees celebrate their knowledge and skills.

Relias provides personalized learning that targets what the employee needs to know while acknowledging the content in which the employee displays competence. “People are really appreciating the personalized learning courses. You’re getting credit for the knowledge that you already have,” Olson said, and then they only have to learn or review the areas that they need.

Ensuring Regulatory Compliance

Relias’ accredited content and state-specific courses support Edgewood’s continued compliance with federal and state regulations as well as staff licensing requirements.

Because Edgewood has locations in seven states, each state has its own annual training plan, divided by quarters, Olson said. With Edgewood’s hundreds of training plans, automated assignments and reporting are vital.

An important part of compliance training is employee, resident, and visitor safety. “Employees need to understand how to keep themselves safe and uninjured along with their residents and anyone who steps into our communities,” Olson said.

Edgewood leaders must ensure staff members get the proper knowledge and skills for their role, their setting, and their state. “The training plan must be all-encompassing and improve the confidence and competence of that employee,” Olson said.

Dementia Tracking Amid Pandemic Challenges

Edgewood has a special emphasis on dementia training, which is a core part of Edgewood’s commitment to providing quality memory care to its residents. The training consists of a nine-section live training and two Teepa Snow Relias courses.

As part of the Edgewood Dementia Training Task Force, Olson is passionate about giving employees who work with residents diagnosed with dementia the best training possible.

“If you know how to interact with the resident, you can bring back memories that they haven’t been able to recall on their own.”

— Hatti Olson, Corporate Education Director, Edgewood Healthcare

When the pandemic struck the nation, all in-person training halted. Olson and the dementia training task force knew they needed to figure out how to continue the dementia training without holding live training sessions.

Using the Relias Platform, the task force uploaded recordings of each section and developed a virtual dementia care course, including a quiz to assess what employees learned.

Olson said she is grateful that the task force and Relias were able to support the Edgewood employees and residents by providing this key training during the pandemic.

Creating Customized Content

Relias’ custom course creation tools help Olson provide employees with the exact training they need in a fraction of the time it would take to develop and implement the courses from scratch.

With Relias Platform tools, Edgewood leaders can create targeted content for a specific need. For example, using the learning platform’s flexible tools, Olson created a medication aide training plan that gives employees who pass the program the ability to function as medication aides within Edgewood’s communities.

With so many learning and development options available on the Relias Platform, Olson is able to provide leaders and caregiving staff the training they need for high-quality, evidence-based care. “It’s what makes their jobs easier. I serve the leaders of our communities,” Olson said.

The post Edgewood Depends on Relias for Ease of Use, Compliance, and Customization Options appeared first on Relias.

But beyond those foundations, the PruittHealth learning and development (L&D) team leveraged the Relias Platform and education modules to enhance staff development opportunities and retention rates.

THE RESULTS

• A workforce that can adapt to roles in varied PruittHealth care settings
• A home-grown leadership program with dramatically low turnover rates

Founded in 1969, PruittHealth is a family-owned healthcare organization spread across the southeastern U.S., touching 170 communities and providing care for over 24,000 patients daily. The organization’s services encompass skilled nursing, post-acute care centers, home health, hospice, therapy, pharmacy, consulting services, and a medical supplies division — allowing PruittHealth to provide truly holistic care.

Managing Training Assignments for Thousands

With more than 13,000 staff members spanning multiple states and care settings, PruittHealth needed a system that was convenient for team members and simultaneously eased the stress on leaders who assigned and tracked staff training.

To keep all its locations and settings up to par, PruittHealth needed a consistent approach to onboarding, compliance training, and professional development for staff (called “partners”). “We partner together, regardless of our job titles, to take care of our patients and residents and to support each other,” said Wendy Meinert, Vice President of Professional Services, PruittHealth.

By leveraging the Relias Platform and the thousands of online compliance and continuing education courses offered, Meinert and her L&D team have ensured PruittHealth partners have the knowledge and skills to remain competent and confident in the care they provide.

“It’s an easily centralized system for managing education and training plans for all of our service lines. And it’s so easy to build training plans and to update them based on new education that’s needed.”
— Wendy Meinert, VP of Professional Services, PruittHealth

Cross-Training Nurse Aides for Different Setting

With turnover presenting critical problems throughout health care, PruittHealth leaders wanted to encourage staff who craved a change to stay and move into other roles within the organization. A staff member might move from a temporary nurse aide role to a certified nursing assistant (CNA) role, or from CNA to medical records, for example.

Focusing on opportunities for nurse aides to move laterally or up to leadership roles has paid off for individuals and the greater organization. PruittHealth has certified medication aides (CMAs) working in assisted living and CNAs in skilled nursing and hospice settings, noted Brian Mock Sr., Regional Partner Services Manager at PruittHealth. Providing training in all those areas has allowed staff more professional mobility.

Starting in 2016, PruittHealth expanded its nurse aide training program from two to four levels, with senior CNA at the top. When nurse aides achieve senior CNA status, they earn a pay increase.

PruittHealth’s investment in training using the Relias Platform has been a win-win. The senior CNAs earn more money and gain leadership expertise while PruittHealth leaders have more flexibility when they need to schedule their nurse aides in different care settings.

CNA Leadership Training Pays Off With Low Turnover

Through its revamped CNA training program, PruittHealth has developed more competent and confident staff members who provide evidence- based care and become leaders in the organization. The CNAs who have completed all four levels of training “return to their location and become the senior leader and a kind of coach,” Mock said.

With the Relias Platform at the core, PruittHealth has invested in its CNAs’ career growth and development. The company now reports a CNA turnover rate between 6% and 13% for those who have completed the leadership program and more than 50% if they have not. The industry average is around 60% to 70%.

“Those partners recognize the energy put into developing them, and it has greatly reduced the turnover in our senior CNAs,” said Meinert. CNAs gain more confidence because of the leadership training they receive, along with the additional in-person training with senior partners. “It helps them see within themselves their capabilities to advance and move into other areas,” she said.

The leadership program has opened up opportunities for around 1,000 CNAs — current participants and program graduates — since the overhaul in 2016. “Additional leadership training is a confidence booster,” said Meinert. “It makes them feel like they’re different, they’re special, because we’ve selected them to represent us as a company. Education is powerful. Knowledge is powerful.”

The post PruittHealth Leverages Relias To Ease Staffing Concerns and Develop Future Leaders appeared first on Relias.

Headquartered in the greater Philadelphia area, KenCrest offers a variety of services across three states. Best known for the work it does for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), KenCrest provides services to IDD clients of all ages across Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Closer to home in Philadelphia, the organization also branched out into providing educational services to children and families.

With over 240 locations, including 220 community living facilities, KenCrest offers an array of programs for the populations it serves.

These programs include:

• Personal supports
• Early learning centers
• Independent living
• Community living
• Life sharing programs
• Nursing and clinical assistance
• Early intervention programs
• Employment options

To hire and retain excellent staff across so many different locations, KenCrest needed a way to improve its onboarding process while simultaneously reducing turnover rates. This led to the adoption of Relias Assessments.

To learn more about how KenCrest uses Relias Assessments to bolster organizational efforts around training and retention, we spoke with Erik Gore, Assistant Director of Training and Organizational Development. A 28-year veteran of KenCrest, Gore has led the organization’s training efforts for several decades and has overseen its partnership with Relias since the beginning.

Creating better pre-employment screenings with Relias Assessments

Though KenCrest initially partnered with Relias to improve compliance-based training, Gore and his team have moved their use of the Relias Platform beyond just maintaining compliance in order to take full advantage of its features. One way they’ve done this is through Relias’ role-specific pre-hire assessments for IDD providers.

Before bringing on a new hire, KenCrest issues the candidate an assessment through the Relias Platform. This gives KenCrest a chance to assess their strengths and knowledge gaps. Relias Assessments allow KenCrest to “know what we’re getting,” Gore said.

With these assessment results in hand, KenCrest creates and delivers a tailored onboarding training program within the Relias Platform to newly hired IDD providers. This facilitates better hiring decisions and decreases the time needed to onboard new hires.

“We don’t waste time with going back and re-enrolling our new hires into a training that they’re already strong in,” Gore said.

Using Relias Assessments to improve retention

The effective use of pre-employment screenings has allowed KenCrest to hire candidates who better match skills requirements for open roles. Once these new hires join the team, they have training in the Relias Platform assigned to them based on the skill gaps identified in their pre-assessments.

“We know the strengths of this individual and we know what they need a little help in. So it’s easy to develop a plan for them when they start their careers here.”

– Erik Gore, Assistant Director of Training and Organizational Development

KenCrest then uses the Relias Platform to identify which staff members have, and have not, completed these trainings. This makes it easier to follow up with staff members and help guide them through any areas that may be giving them trouble.

By getting to know its new hires so well before they even start, KenCrest is able to better set them up for success within its organization. This has allowed KenCrest to achieve fantastic results in staff retention. Gore noted that since KenCrest implemented Relias Assessments, the organization has seen its retention rate increase by 20%.

Building a culture of learning with Relias Assessments

Relias Assessments don’t just make training easier for staff members, they also make it easier for administrators and learning and development (L&D) leaders to design training. With assessment scores for their IDD nurses, DSPs, and QIDPs, L&D departments can use a data-driven approach to help improve organizational learning. Through the Relias Platform, KenCrest not only made its training content better, but also more convenient for staff to take.

“It is making training…easier, because it’s right there at their fingertips, they don’t have to come into the building anymore,” Gore said. “We’ve been doing a lot of hybrid-based trainings.”

More convenient training options combined with staff members’ ability to gain insight into their own strengths and weaknesses via Relias Assessments has led to increased personal accountability around learning.

“It’s made people more accountable for their own professional development, and it’s made people more accountable for their own training in general.”

– Erik Gore, Assistant Director of Training and Organizational Development

All these benefits have led members of the organization to buy in to KenCrest’s culture of learning. Whether it’s staff members addressing skill gaps that lead to better job performance and career growth, or administrators using the Relias Platform to design better training programs, every member of the organization sees the benefit of a learning culture.

“Relias has shaped our culture of learning.”

– Erik Gore, Assistant Director of Training and Organizational Development

The post KenCrest Improves Its Hiring and Onboarding Processes With Relias Assessments appeared first on Relias.

Headquartered in the greater Philadelphia area, KenCrest offers a variety of services across three states. Best known for the work it does for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), KenCrest provides services to IDD clients of all ages across Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut.

Closer to home in Philadelphia, the organization also branched out into providing educational services to children and families. With over 240 locations, including 220 community living facilities, KenCrest offers an array of programs for the populations it serves.

These programs include:

• Personal supports
• Early learning centers
• Independent living
• Community living
• Life sharing programs
• Nursing and clinical assistance
• Early intervention programs
• Employment options

To learn more about how KenCrest has used Relias to bolster its organizational efforts around training to better support these populations and services, we spoke with Erik Gore, Assistant Director of Training and Organizational Development. A 28-year veteran of KenCrest, Gore has led the organization’s training efforts for several decades and has overseen its partnership with Relias since the beginning.

Creating a culture of compliance

Prior to partnering with Relias, KenCrest relied on paper documents and spreadsheets to administer and track training. But as the organization continued to grow, it became too difficult to keep track of staff members’ compliance, deliver training on time, and other administrative tasks that come with training compliance. To help bring more efficiency to this process, KenCrest partnered with Relias.

With the Relias Platform, KenCrest began issuing all compliance-based training through one centralized system. “Having the necessary training right at a staff person’s fingertips” provided a huge boon to KenCrest’s learning and development efforts, Gore said.

Using Relias, KenCrest also began offering hybrid training options, meaning staff members could complete portions of their training online. This allowed Gore and his colleagues to design training options that are more convenient for their staff members.

For KenCrest, convenience doesn’t stop at hybrid course options, however. “The library is totally open to all our learners,” Gore explained. By allowing all staff members to access its entire Relias library, KenCrest ensures anyone in its organization can access the required training courses, as well as elective courses, at any time. This has allowed KenCrest to meet the needs of staff working in different states, with differing compliance requirements.

To achieve a true culture of compliance, KenCrest also uses the Relias Platform to help make training administrators’ jobs a little easier. In the Relias Platform, training administrators can set alerts to let learners know that they have a course due. Using this functionality, Gore’s team automated an otherwise time-consuming and tedious process — finding staff members who had yet to complete their compliance training and emailing them individually.

With this approach to training, KenCrest has seen compliance-based course completions increase by 22% in the last year alone.

Taking the platform beyond compliance training

The Relias Platform has meant far more than convenient compliance training for KenCrest. Gore and his team have also used Relias Assessments available in the platform to perform pre-hire job knowledge screening.

This allows KenCrest to know both the strengths and knowledge gaps of the new staff members.

“We know the strengths of this individual, and we know what they need a little help in. So it’s easy to develop a plan for them when they start their careers here,”

– Erik Gore, Assistant Director of Training and Organizational Development

Once staff members enter the organization, they are assigned 12 competency modules, again within the Relias Platform. This has allowed KenCrest to create training plans that guarantee all staff members have the same knowledge base.

KenCrest rolled out this training program using the content authoring tool to create its own content, while also taking advantage of Relias’ library of IDD-focused e-learning content. “We leveraged Relias to add those training competencies into the platform or add them to an existing module that Relias already had,” Gore recounted.

Aware that some staff members may find the platform daunting, Gore spearheaded an organizational initiative called “Try It Thursday.” As Gore explains, this is a monthly workshop where he explains the ins-and-outs of the Relias Platform. All members of the KenCrest staff can join these workshops, from direct support professionals (DSPs) to administrators. To make these sessions as useful and accessible as possible, Gore also records them and stores the recordings on the Relias Platform. This way, employees can go back at any time and review them.

Through initiatives like Try It Thursday, KenCrest has created a thirst for learning within its organization.

Using Relias to accelerate organizational growth

KenCrest knows that without a stable, well-trained staff base, the organization cannot grow. To that end, KenCrest uses Relias to not only train staff members in the skills they need for their current roles, but on skills they’ll need to take the next step in their careers.

“We are giving them the skills to be emerging leaders inside and outside of KenCrest,” Gore said. While some organizations may prove reticent to introduce training that could help staff find other employment options, KenCrest knows that the benefits outweigh the costs. The data KenCrest collects around its retention efforts has proven the effectiveness of its training program in creating a happier, more engaged staff.

Before partnering with Relias, KenCrest had a 40% retention rate. Since instituting better training programs focused on employee growth and retention, it has increased the retention rate to 60%.

Moving forward, Gore and his team plan to continue to strengthen these retention efforts using Relias. Through the Skillsoft® courses available in the Relias library, Gore plans to offer more training on leadership, emotional intelligence, and communication. With these modules, he wants to train the next generation of KenCrest leaders. Ultimately, this will help KenCrest to retain top talent and continue to grow as an organization.

“It’s so important for any industry, any agency, to invest in their current employees, that’s the only way that you are going to get better as an organization.”

– Erik Gore, Assistant Director of Training and Organizational Development

The post KenCrest Uses Relias To Drive Organizational Compliance and Growth appeared first on Relias.

• 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.”

The post Center for Health Care Services Created a Culture of Compliance Using Relias appeared first on Relias.

Before implementing Relias, Blue Mountain did not have a structured method for administering training and tracking compliance across the organization, according to Cari Spillman, Compliance Program Director, who oversees infection control, compliance, patient safety, and continuing education for Blue Mountain.

Information was kept on paper, in files, with minimal tracking on desktop computers, leading to potential access and scheduling issues and missed training targets. With Relias, the hospital now has a course compliance rate over 80%.

Gaining Structure and Speed with Automated Training Administration

By bringing in the Relias Platform, Blue Mountain gained the ability to organize its staff training in a comprehensive way. Adoption by Blue Mountain staff happened quickly, and Relias now automatically tracks all education for the hospital and provides staff with reminders and easy access to the training it needs.

Spillman can easily assign courses, track completions, and identify gaps. Staff members have consistent, quality content and completion certificates all in one place. Reflecting on the before and after, Spillman said the difference Relias made was “night and day.”

Spillman also noted that she frequently relies on Relias Customer Support’s chat function to get fast help from a real person.

Serving a Diverse, Rural Community

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has designated Blue Mountain as a Critical Access Hospital. The designation aims to reduce the financial vulnerability of the rural hospital and improve access to healthcare by keeping essential services in the community.

Although Blue Mountain Hospital is a small, rural facility, it provides comprehensive medical services, including surgery, obstetrics, orthopedics, dialysis, laboratory services, radiology, and emergency care. Located near Lake Powell, Moab, Mesa Verde, Canyonlands, and a Ute and a Navajo Reservation, the hospital serves a critical need for a diverse population of 15,000 residents and
hundreds of thousands of visitors to the area each year.

CEO Jeremy Lyman won the Excellence in Care During COVID-19 award at the Rural Hospital Administrators Summit in 2021.

Educating New Staff Effectively Despite Obstacles

When new employees join Blue Mountain Hospital, Spillman provides an orientation that includes emergency codes, fire safety, annual training requirements, and the Relias Platform. They learn what courses are available and how the system tracks course completions. After orientation, they are assigned department- specific onboarding courses on the Platform.

Spillman noted that some of their new hires who went to school during the pandemic didn’t feel as comfortable in clinical settings because their programs were modified due to COVID-19. They may have had online labs instead of in-person learning experiences, for example. When they came to Blue Mountain, some were eager to get more training on the job, and Relias helped fill those gaps.

Blue Mountain’s efforts have paid off. CEO Jeremy Lyman won the Excellence in Care During COVID-19 award at the Rural Hospital Administrators Summit in 2021.

Providing Pathways for Compliance and Career Advancement

For existing staff members, the Relias Platform serves as a critical resource, helping them keep their licenses up to date, meet hospital compliance requirements, and advance their education.

They can review prior training they’ve taken and seek out additional learning on their own as they need it. This learning can open new career pathways. For example, the hospital offers a Tech to LPN program that gives patient care techs a way to earn higher wages while they work toward their RN licenses.

The hospital has also participated in the Resuscitation Quality Improvement Program, offered through Relias, to increase certifications in high-quality CPR knowledge and staff competency.

To spark interest, the hospital incentivizes training with prize drawings. If staff members are 100% complete with their training and 100% compliant all year long, they are eligible to win. The incentive program has energized the staff and increased the number of staff members meeting the criteria many times over, transforming entire departments from low- to high-compliance teams. “Relias has been a game-changer,” Spillman observed.

Meeting Education Delivery and Optimization Challenges with Relias

Blue Mountain was fortunate to maintain its level of onboarding effectiveness during the COVID-19 pandemic despite hiring challenges. For its other educational needs, some in-person training continued with small class sizes, but many staff members took their training remotely with Relias.

In the coming year, Spillman hopes to further leverage cost savings by encouraging more staff members to turn to Relias to fulfill their CEUs instead of traveling to obtain them.

“Whenever we have a new challenge, there’s always the question, ‘Can we do this with Relias?’ We’re using it more and more. It seems like we’re learning something new every week that we can do with it. There are so many things you can do with Relias. We keep learning and growing with it.” – Cari Spillman, Compliance Program Director

Patients are the ultimate beneficiaries of the enhanced education. When nurses and care teams maintain their skills and competencies — from clinical knowledge to customer service — Blue Mountain has seen patient care improve. “Patient care and safety are our number one priority,” said Spillman.

The post Blue Mountain Hospital Advances to Digitized Learning appeared first on Relias.

PAM Health’s rapid expansion — with no signs of slowing down — has brought thousands of additional patients and employees into the system. With the rapid growth, the company needed automated, user-friendly human resources and training processes — and needed them fast.

Automation was vital to make post-acquisition employee onboarding easier and, perhaps more importantly, to influence positive patient outcomes through high-quality staff training and coaching, said Kevin Kahl, Vice President of Organizational Innovation.

“My goal is to help employees use these tools so that they can realize how their input into their role affects patient outcomes. That’s number one,” — Kevin Kahl, Vice President of Organizational Innovation

While PAM Health had already implemented some aspects of the Relias Platform, leaders recognized the need for full utilization after acquiring 16 additional specialty and rehabilitation hospitals. “Having a learning platform that had automation capabilities that could interface with our human resources information system (HRIS) was critical.”

Supporting Seamless Acquisitions

When PAM Health acquires a hospital or another facility, leaders typically increase the staffing in that location to ensure a high level of patient care. The company’s strategy is to equip acquired units with human capital and other tools to be efficient and effective in providing care. But when it comes to onboarding, orientation, and training large numbers of employees, PAM Health turns to Relias.

Kahl creates training plans specifically for newly acquired operations. After the initial setup, that training plan runs itself for at least the next year. “When we purchase, acquire, or merge with a new hospital, we use Relias to ramp up staffing so we can help more people and provide the best patient care in the community,” said Kahl.

Even though PAM Health has tripled its workforce during Kahl’s time, the amount of work that it takes for Kahl to build training plans for the entire company has increased only minimally. Kahl acknowledges that Relias makes it easy, saying, “It’s a click of a button to add a new hierarchy or a new hospital.”

Auto-Enroll by Specific Identifiers

With the help of his Relias client success manager (CSM), Kahl was also able to use the auto-enrollments feature to add employees to the training platform quickly.

“The ability to auto-enroll by position, location, and specific identifiers that we can create internally is a great benefit.” — Kevin Kahl, Vice President of Organizational Innovation

Interface with Human Resource Systems

Also crucial to the success of PAM Health’s acquisitions is Relias’ ability to interface effectively with the company’s human resources system. The interface eliminates the need to run manual feeds, which became an unwieldy process as the number of PAM Health employees grew. “It cut down the time we spent on certain workflows, which we were doing when we had a smaller number of employees. That was rough,” Kahl added.

Expedite Compliance with Policies and Procedures

Along with using Relias for acquisition-related onboarding and orientation, PAM Health also uses the Relias Policies and Procedures feature to assemble binders when employees need to attest to reviewing policies that have changed quickly.

Whether those changes are related to COVID, regulatory initiatives from the government, or an internal process, Relias makes it easy for PAM Health to update staff. Kahl said, “Communication and policy adjustments have been a critical part of not only acquisitions, but the company as a whole.”

No-Fluff Learning That Sticks and High Completion Rates

As superusers of Relias training plans, PAM Health learning and development leaders have seen concrete improvements in staff engagement and the pursuit of continuing education. Things didn’t start out this way, however.

Kahl said, “When I started with PAM Health, our completion rate was pretty low.” After optimizing the company’s use of Relias’ training programs, Kahl saw a phenomenal average of 23 training completions per user for 8,741 users.

Kahl’s approach was to divide the company’s annual training plans into quarters and distribute them over the Relias Platform. For example, Q1 might be dedicated to regulatory compliance, Q2 might focus on internal compliance, Q3, job- specific training, and Q4 on new training needs that arise during the year.

“Building quarterly training allowed our employees to adapt to using the Relias Platform on a regular basis. Relias became part of our everyday lives. We built it into the culture.” — Kevin Kahl, Vice President of Organizational Innovation

The personalized quarterly training approach and the built-in communication features have made it easier for Kahl to keep training top of mind for employees. The leaderboards built into employee dashboards are great motivators, he said.

High completion rates aren’t the only benefit Kahl saw from using Relias training plans. The training content itself has helped employees retain and use the information they learn in their jobs. Kahl said, “The content forces the learner to read and click through everything. There’s no fluff around the information. It gives employees exactly what they need to know to be successful in their jobs.” Whereas some training platforms are merely a checkbox tool, “Relias is truly an educational tool. It facilitates e-learning at a high level,” Kahl said.

Ease of Access to Employee Development Options

Kahl characterized the Relias Platform’s user interface as easy to use. Because the interface “is so intuitive,” he said, supervisors and learners can dive right in and begin using it.

Relias Connect has removed a significant customer service burden from Kahl and PAM Health’s HR teams. Educators show employees how to log in and then refer them to Relias Connect with questions. “It is very rare for someone to reach out to me for support,” said Kahl. “When we provide an overview of Relias for employees, it’s really nice to say, ‘I’ve never found an error with this system. Nothing really goes wrong on our end.’”

While the quarterly trainings, content, and user interface have helped PAM Health achieve fantastic results, employees really like the ability to earn CEUs. Kahl emphasized, “That’s the best feature of Relias, hands down, that I get feedback from across our company.”

Employees can search the system for their desired certificate — state-specific occupational therapy, physical therapy, SHRM, etc. — and find modules that count toward CEUs for their certification. They can complete the course, immediately work toward the certification, and provide proof that they’ve completed it. “It’s a great feature,” Kahl said. “People love it.”

Time Savings That Support Long-Term Business Growth

Kahl’s position as a Relias administrator was originally meant to be full time. Thanks to the system’s user-friendliness and reliable support from the CSM and Relias Connect, “It never really evolved to be full-time until we grew recently, and that’s only because we expanded our line of business,” said Kahl. That time savings has enabled PAM Health to invest in other areas that support business growth, such as organizational and leadership development.

A fast-growing healthcare organization like PAM Health needs an automated HR and training system that can keep pace with current challenges, make future expansion as seamless as possible, and support positive patient outcomes.

That’s exactly what PAM Health has found with Relias. “I’ve worked with learning platforms where you need a whole team with background in IT to run it,” said Kahl.

“Relias is extremely efficient. The automated features, system design, training content, reporting — it’s all very effective.” — Kevin Kahl, Vice President of Organizational Innovation

The post PAM Health Supports Business Growth, Employee Engagement, and Better Patient Outcomes With Relias appeared first on Relias.

• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Plus (CBT+)
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)
• Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT)
• Medication management
• Psychiatric treatment

To meet the needs of its clients and provide these services at a high level, ABH maintains a diverse base of staff members who have a wide array of specialties like stress and anxiety, childhood depression, couples therapy, and more.

While such a variety of services and specialties enables ABH to provide better care to clients, it can make training difficult. To help staff members get the training they need, all within one learning platform, the organization turned to Relias.

Using Relias to offer quality and convenient CEUs

With so many different services and specialties, ABH needed an effective way to deliver a multitude of training options. The variety of training modules offered by Relias filled this need perfectly.
For Christina McDermott, MHRM, Human Resources Manager, and Vera Kurdian, CEO, this was the initial draw of Relias and its Learning and Development Solutions.

One of the most impactful ways ABH has used Relias to generate positive outcomes for the organization is through continuing education units (CEUs). Traditionally, ABH’s clinicians have had to enroll in external, in-person training to meet their individual CEU requirements, often paying out of pocket for their training.

With Relias, ABH has brought this process in-house. Through Relias’ Learning and Development Solutions, ABH staff members can take their CEUs via the Relias Platform at no additional cost to themselves.

The convenience of this continuing education process has led ABH to integrate Relias into its recruitment processes as well.

“I can say to new staff members, ‘You don’t have to go anywhere to get your CEUs. You could take it right from your couch or in your office.’” — Vera Kurdian, CEO

The convenience of Relias has allowed ABH to evolve its training processes in other ways. Using Relias’ Course Authoring tool, ABH has created custom trainings around proprietary organizational processes and procedures.

And by combining this tool with training content created by Relias, ABH has delivered timely trainings on important topics such as LGBTQ+ mental health and working with clients’ anxieties over mass shootings. “The material isn’t just about teaching,” Kurdian said. “It’s also about increasing awareness.”

Creating better accreditation processes

As an outpatient mental health clinic, maintaining various accreditation standards has become a key part of ABH’s training programs. One such standard that stands out is the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). McDermott and Kuridan noted that Relias plays a central role in the way ABH delivers training to staff to maintain CARF accreditation.

“In order for us to get accredited, we need to have a partnership with a company that provides these trainings,” Kurdian said.

One of the ways ABH has streamlined the accreditation process is by using the administrative features of the Relias Platform to easily assign trainings to staff. “I love being able to tag people to different roles,” McDermott said.

“When we are assigning out the courses and we’re looking at which courses apply to each department and each role, it’s really easy to pick up the training plan and just assign it out.” — Christina McDermott, MHRM, Human Resources Manager

By creating groups of training modules within Relias, and then assigning these groupings to the appropriate staff members, ABH can quickly and easily deliver necessary trainings to staff.

After CARF-required trainings are assigned, ABH can then use the Relias Platform to report on the outcomes. By using Relias’ reporting feature, ABH can pull compliance records from the same system used to deliver the training. This makes it easier for administrators and saves ABH from having to integrate multiple platforms.

This also allows ABH to gain insight into which staff members have yet to complete their CARF trainings and work with those individuals to help them move past any roadblocks they’ve encountered.

Working with Relias to optimize onboarding

Impressed by the results Relias content has helped staff members achieve, ABH has worked to integrate Relias into the entire employee lifecycle. Beginning with new hire orientation, ABH dedicates an entire day of orientation to getting new staff members acquainted with Relias.

“We have a whole day devoted to trainings in Relias that we think are important for our new hires coming on board.” — Christina McDermott, MHRM, Human Resources Manager

This process cuts down on the time it takes to get new hires the training they need, allowing them to begin meeting with, and helping, clients much faster.

ABH does not restrict this onboarding process to full-time staff. When interns come on board, ABH assigns them Relias trainings as well. With an intern retention rate of 50%, this early introduction to Relias makes it easier for ABH to transition successful interns into full-time staff.

By using Relias’ Learning and Development Solutions with interns as well as full-time staff, ABH has created essential continuity in training that accommodates bringing new staff members in who are already well acquainted with in-house training systems.

But onboarding at ABH does not stop with orientation. After completing their new hire orientation, all new staff members are enrolled in ABH Academy, a program where they receive more in-depth training on the topics covered during orientation. Moving forward, ABH hopes to integrate other features of the Relias Platform, such as virtual classrooms, into their ABH Academy program to facilitate better training processes.

“I’m trying to use Relias for that classroom piece and setting up those life-like classrooms,” McDermott said. In this way, ABH hopes to give a dispersed workforce the ability to gather and learn together via a virtual platform.

The post Advanced Behavioral Health, Inc.: Creating Better Learning and Onboarding Processes appeared first on Relias.

With two campuses — a total of 143 beds on the northwest and southeast sides of Oklahoma City — the hospital has a straightforward mission: to provide excellence in quality and service. In particular, the organization carries a deep commitment to providing the highest quality of nursing care, with an average experience level among nurses of over nine years.

Kristine Kimmel, RN, BSN, CCRN, and Emily Milburn, RN, PCCN, clinical education coordinators for both Oklahoma Heart Hospital campuses, are responsible for onboarding new staff. Kimmel oversees education for the critical and intermediate care units and the ER, and Milburn holds similar responsibilities for patient-centered care and the day patient areas. Together, they oversee the hospital’s orientation process and education programs while holding additional hospital responsibilities.

Creating a Culture of Excellence Beginning with Flexible Onboarding

During Oklahoma Heart Hospital’s orientation process, Kimmel and Milburn introduce the organization’s culture to new hires and grad nurses, students, clinician specialists, and staff. They then incorporate it into new projects and processes.

“This is something that we pride ourselves in as an organization,” Kimmel said. “We have definitely worked hard at this the last couple years with the high levels of burnout in healthcare that we’re seeing.” Milburn added, “It always renews our spirit to work with the next generation of nurses. It is very much a positive part of what we do.”

Oklahoma Heart Hospital has experienced improved education with Relias, and the flexibility of the Relias Platform became a critical lifeline during the pandemic.

One of the Relias capabilities the hospital used to its advantage during COVID-19 shutdowns was the ability to customize the delivery of quarterly leadership meetings. Prior to the pandemic, about 90% of staff attended in person, and 10% would watch a recording later.

Amid the pandemic’s tight restrictions, the organization quickly changed to video for everyone and used Relias to deploy and assign the videos. The model also worked well for recording other live presentations and trainings and tracking who successfully accessed and watched them.

Ensuring Quality Through Continuous
Feedback and Responsive Training

Oklahoma Heart Hospital’s high nurse retention rate correlates to the culture that the organization strives to maintain through education and feedback at every level.

For example, the CEO communicates directly with all staff at orientation, either in person or by video, and holds a 90-day follow-up meeting to check in and allow new hires to provide feedback about how to improve. In these meetings, staff can provide suggestions and insights, and the CEO reiterates important aspects of the organization’s culture

When virtual communications were the norm during COVID-19 restrictions, the hospital leveraged the Relias Platform to deploy staff questionnaires to keep the feedback loop alive. To encourage participation, staff received small incentives for responding. The CEO also used a virtual suggestion box available through the Relias Platform to solicit staff feedback.

The interactive aspect also characterized how the hospital used Relias’ educational content. Kimmel and Milburn estimated that 60–70% of the educational content that hospital staff engaged with was online, which made it extremely flexible. The coordinators could locate and assign modules instantly on an as-needed basis — even when a team member emailed a question or a new hire needed specific information after initial training, for example.

Achieving High Training Completion Rates and Skilled Teams with Training Plans

Although leveraging the interactive capabilities of the Relias Platform helped Oklahoma Heart Hospital maintain consistent, high-quality communication during the pandemic, the Platform’s core features helped it establish a baseline of quality before COVID’s onset that continues today. For example, Relias’ training plans help ensure that all staff members complete the ongoing learning they need.

The hospital’s approximately 2,700 learners on the platform have achieved an average of 23 completions per user. These completions span annual regulatory, IT security and safety, clinical express, infection control, and other critical topics.

Training plans are not just a method of organizing learning into manageable schedules and providing convenient and easy access but are also key to the organization’s quality and safety.

Kimmel and Milburn said the training plans provide a solid foundation for staff to expand their knowledge as needed in a timely manner. They can ensure that staff complete annual training and can customize training for specific groups to meet patient care needs.

Best of all, once the training plans have been set up, Relias automations handle the rest. “Once we figured out that we can make this work for us, we no longer have to have to manually go in and remember to assign this or that. If a new person comes in, they are automatically put in a plan. It really takes a lot off of us and lets us do our other work in the hospital,” said Kimmel. “Having the automated features of Relias is really, really helpful for us. It provides consistency and standardization.”

Because a team member’s first year can be intense, spacing out the learning is critical. When information is prioritized and provided over time, the hospital sees better long-term impact. The information becomes more meaningful, and the benefits to the organization increase as knowledge retention and reinforcement occur over time.

Kimmel and Milburn said they love the training plans and find them very useful in all areas, including clinical topics as well as human resources and business topics.

Empowering Staff to Advance Their Learning with an Extensive Training Library

Oklahoma Heart Hospital also enabled its staff to find and take courses on their own, including both online content modules and in-person offerings at the hospital campuses. Instead of contacting Kimmel and Milburn, staff can log into the Relias platform and find available sessions and modules.

Kimmel recalled how the organization worked over two years to ingrain the idea of education as an expectation, and now learning has become part of every staff member’s responsibility.

“They just log onto Relias. And even if we don’t train them, they can figure it out. It’s just easy. I love that.” – Emily Milburn, RN, PCCN, Oklahoma Heart Hospital Clinical Education Coordinator.

Staff members also know that they can browse the training library at any time to pursue continuing education credits and professional development. While they might look up training on a topic that came up during the care of a patient, they might also find topics proactively that they can then share with other team members — or find new content as it becomes part of Relias’ continually expanding offerings.

Even though they are now smoothly running on Relias, the journey to get there included intermediate steps with other products and processes. Administrators previously used other solutions that had limited capabilities.

When we moved over to Relias, the abilities were just so much more vast, and we started to realize what Relias could do for us. About 95% of everything we have is on there, including orientation packets, articles, and study materials because we can add Word docs, PDFs, and videos. And we’ve got the reporting feature to tell us who’s done it, who hasn’t done it, and the reminders are built in there too. It was a big shift when we got over to Relias” — Kristine Kimmel, RN, BSN, CCRN, Clinical Education Coordinator, Oklahoma Heart Hospital.

They also noted that other solutions didn’t have training plans, requiring them to manually assign all the training every time, with no automation. They also did not have the ability to upload videos. “Those two things have been a game changer,” said Kimmel. The ease of use for administrators, the ability to integrate with other systems, and Relias’ strong customer support also helped significantly.

Kimmel and Milburn love the functionality available within Relias, some of which they want to develop further to find new options to improve their workflows. They don’t hesitate to work with their Relias customer support manager but often find what they need on their own. “It’s not a difficult system to use, and everything you need to train yourself is there.”

Transitioning to a Training Environment with Real-Time Access at All Locations

Oklahoma Heart Hospital’s successful transition to a nearly all-digital environment has helped it manage not only two hospital campuses but also communicate with more than 60 outpatient locations across the state in real time. Because everyone has access, the hospital can be efficient and spend more time with patients.

Another significant benefit is that patients don’t have to spend time filling out the same paperwork multiple times at different locations. Patient charts are seamless, regardless of whether the patient goes to a rural clinic or comes to Oklahoma City for a procedure.

“We can just log in, and everything Is right there. Our efficiency would not be what it is without it, and we wouldn’t have as much patient satisfaction for sure,” said Kimmel. “The nurses and technicians who are working outside of the hospital can just log in and do the same training that somebody’s doing here in the hospital. From an education aspect, we can reach all of those employees.”

Upholding a High Level of Quality Through Accountability and Transparency with Relias

The work to improve and modernize its operations has garnered Oklahoma Heart Hospital an impressive range of awards for patient satisfaction and quality and safety, several of which it has won for multiple years. These recognitions reflect the organization’s success in achieving and upholding high standards.

Kimmel recalls a time early in her nursing career when she shared stories with friends from nursing school who worked at other organizations. She observed that other organizations sometimes did not welcome feedback from their staff, and criticism was often met with indifference. From that, she learned the importance of organizational culture, and how it relates to overall quality.

Oklahoma Heart Hospital’s goal of zero harm for patients is ambitious and requires total commitment. “We empower the nursing staff to speak up if something doesn’t look or sound right. I think that serves our patient satisfaction because they have trust in us as an organization,” said Kimmel.

Frequent communication across organizational levels is key to maintaining quality. “Communication is constant,” said Kimmel. “It’s crucial for holding to a high standard. Our CNO might say, ‘When you’re rounding, please talk about this and put something out on Relias about it.’ Staff members know specifically where we made a mistake, own it, and can correct the situation to provide satisfaction for the patient.”

Looking Ahead with Relias Content and Feature Updates

Oklahoma Heart Hospital has achieved success with the Relias Platform but still has plans to explore even more, including additional content libraries and the virtual classroom, which could allow busy providers more flexibility. Especially after the pandemic, many community members expect recorded or online education options, but others prefer in-person opportunities. Kimmel noted, “We’re trying to balance these needs by having some live sessions and offering some on Relias.”

Kimmel and Milburn prize the ease of use, accessibility, and multidimensional aspects of Relias and are positive about the impact Relias has had in enabling Oklahoma Heart Hospital’s success and the possibilities for the future. “The more I learn about what Relias has, the more I’m looking to incorporate,” said Kimmel.

The post Oklahoma Heart Hospital Provides Excellence in Quality and Service with Relias appeared first on Relias.