Implementing a new electronic health record (EHR) system may well be one of the biggest operational initiatives an organization will take on for years. Because of that impact, organizations embarking on an EHR implementation invest a significant effort in preplanning and reviewing all facets of the implementation to ensure a successful deployment and to establish a strong foundation for post-live operations.
One of the key areas of this pre-planning phase involves developing a vigorous training program that ensures clinical adoption, end-user satisfaction, and overall implementation success. While many of these programs lead to great achievements for the install, it is the months afterwards that ongoing training efforts must be revisited to sustain success.
CSI Companies, a leading EHR Training and Activation firm, has provided both implementation and post go-live training support for over 15 years. We call our approach to post live training the Steady State Program (SSP), which provides a long-term solution for post-live training of new hires, ongoing education for active users related to system changes and deficiencies, as well as end-user support to drive adoption. Whether supported in house or through a partner like CSI, it’s worth having a discussion of how the inclusion of long-term steady state training may help any organization through the waves of future system optimizations, upgrades, and enhancements within a virtual, in-person, or hybrid training model. Let’s cover new hire and ongoing training for your clinical and administrative staff as well as discuss developing metrics, how best to maintain build and curriculum, and consider variations of staffing models.
New Hire and Ongoing Training
Areas to consider when creating a long-term training strategy range from new hire training to upgrades and ongoing system enhancements. Many organizations prioritize the successful onboarding and training for new physicians, as one example. Creating a robust approach that allows the new clinician to adapt to the role with confidence, while familiarizing themselves with department-specific policies and procedures, is ideal. The support should include surrounding new hires with proper methods for clinical documentation, tools needed, and integrated training for third party systems in a workflow-based curriculum.
For clinical, patient access, and back office supporting roles across scheduling, billing, nursing, and ancillary service areas, facilities need a solid operational training program that aligns with workflow decisions and system capabilities to lead to end user adoption. On demand training is often a challenge as new hires spike within different departments and/or types of roles, requiring a truly flexible scheduling system and resources to meet the demands. Regardless of end user role, success is most often achieved with workflow/role-based materials being developed, both in and out of the classroom, to ensure end user adoption, utilization, and overall satisfaction. Of course, monitoring that adoption is another key element for consideration of a long-term training program and one that should be baked into the early planning phase.
Metrics
The creation of training tools to manage end user attendance, provide retention metrics, develop tracking mechanisms with measurable outcomes, and gauge end-user satisfaction to drive the overall EHR experience are all essential elements to a post live training program. The investment and development in robust toolkits and/or a learning management system (LMS), with strong reporting capabilities, leads to continued success for any training program. Ideal needs within the LMS and/or other tools include transition tracking, engagement reports, reporting templates for collecting class and learner data, dashboards, scheduling management, as well as survey and assessment tools. Understanding the metrics and creating actionable outcomes from them are another key element to ongoing success.
When designing post-live training programs, consider various upcoming initiatives like openings of new facilities, Community Connect, and/or system upgrades that may impact current state build. These often require adjustments to the tracking tools. This can add to labor and external software costs significantly if not planned for. CSI has a successful record of aligning a range of customized tool sets that can help with both labor and technical costs while ensuring ongoing quality of training and retention of materials.
Build and Curriculum Upkeep
Ongoing development and maintenance of course catalogs, training curriculum, training build environments, upgrade release training materials, foundation eLearning files, and new education materials all need to be considered for post-live, training programs. Here, the philosophy to success is to take a pro-active approach vs reactive. CSI’s SSP customers benefit from strategic course consolidation, cross-certification and credentialing of resources, and workforce streamlining for sustainability. Additionally, customized training materials and asynchronous adaptive eLearning development designed to supplement required training, promote efficiency, and boost end user satisfaction is carefully laid out.
Ongoing system maintenance of training environments requires Principal Trainers for most applications. However, in collaboration with the analyst teams, many applications can be grouped and upkept by a smaller number of resources. Credentialed Trainers are a cost-effective option for ongoing new hire training, personalization, and on demand training needs. Also consider the robustness of the Super User program. Ask how dependable and impactful those resources can be in the long term when making decisions for support models. CSI has a long history of working with a range of facilities to lay out future state models that align directly with the organization’s culture, commitments, and expectations, including in the CSI SSP offering.
Post-Live Staffing Models
One of our favorite sayings while in planning sessions is making sure we “don’t put the cart before the horse.” A common theme in many organizations is aligning future staffing needs and budgets before laying out a full scope of services and support needs. The phrase literally translates into doing things in the wrong order, and creating staffing models without agreeing on scope is just that, the wrong order. First, identify and agree on scope; from there, organizations can make better staffing decisions. One of Stephen Covey’s habits, from his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” begins with the end in mind. Think about who your learner audience is now and what you want the organization to look like when planning the staffing for all future, post-live, training needs.
