e-learning replaces classroom: Wisconsin healthcare network uses LMS to educate staff and to track federally mandated training - Learning management systems: case history

Health Management Technology, April, 2003

As healthcare facilities across the nation admit more patients, increase demands on doctors and face nursing shortages, they cannot afford to have their employees spend any more time taking federally mandated training than is necessary. They need to save both time and money while ensuring that their staff have obtained required certification.

Based in La Crosse, WI, Gundersen Lutheran is a complete healthcare network that represents one of the nation's largest group medical practices and employs more than 5,500 employees across southeast Minnesota, southwest Wisconsin and northeast Iowa. The organization offers regional community clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, home care, behavioral health services, eye clinics, pharmacies, and air and ground ambulances.

As a federally regulated healthcare provider, Gundersen Lutheran must ensure that each of its employees--whether a nurse, neurosurgeon or custodian--annually takes at least five of 14 courses mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The topics for the courses range from fire safety to bloodborne pathogens. No less important to the healthcare network is its desire to tailor training to fit doctors' and nurses' hectic schedules.

PROBLEM

Before April 2002, Gundersen Lutheran's Safety Department staff taught OSHA courses by traveling throughout the network; each class lasted two hours, and instructors taught with PowerPoint presentations. There was minimal Web-based delivery of OSHA courses--most employees had to sit through an instruction until teachers gave a test at the end of class.

"Our training system was paper-based and decentralized, so we spent a lot of time and money duplicating and managing classes for our employees," says Jay Fernandez, manager of HRIS at Gundersen Lutheran. "If we had had Web-based education, then employees could leapfrog over material they already knew."

Fernandez had another problem. Because of a decentralized system for tracking attendance, Gundersen Lutheran had to rely upon its instructors and departmental managers to deliver class rolls and reports to its Training and Development Department. Each year, it was a challenge to get all employees through the training program.

According to Fernandez, there was no easy way for Gundersen Lutheran to organize its continuing education or prove compliance with OSHA. "When the auditors told us they were coming, we prepared by collecting reports from every corner of the operation," he says. "We needed a system that was easy to deploy on the Web, allowed us to manage a lot of content from multiple sources in different formats, and offered comprehensive reporting capabilities."

Since Fernandez desired a central point for an employee's payroll, personnel and training data, he wanted the system to pass data back and forth between Gundersen Lutheran's Lawson HR suite and a Kronos time and attendance tool. In addition, by interfacing the new system with the Kronos software, he would know when employees were in a class. For instance, an employee would swipe his or her Kronos ID card in the classroom's card reader upon entering and exiting. This would tell Fernandez how long someone spent in class and automatically update the employee's training file.

SOLUTION

To meet the healthcare network's training needs, in January 2002, Fernandez picked the Learning Management System (LMS) from Pathlore Inc., an e-learning software maker. Pathlore LMS manages and tracks education delivered online. The LMS's tracking features, for example, would allow Fernandez to quickly generate detailed reports showing that employees met safety training mandated by OSHA. At an online student learning center, employees could decide which courses they need to take and when to take them, as well as track their progress.

Pathlore LMS also gave Gundersen Lutheran's training staff the ability to schedule classes, keep tabs on when employees' professional certifications must be obtained or renewed, and automate registrations for a wide variety of courses beyond OSHA courses.

Although Fernandez considered a number of LMS solutions from a variety of vendors, he chose the one from Pathlore. "Not only did Pathlore's LMS offer us everything we wanted, but we were confident they would be in business for a long time to come, which wasn't how we felt about the other firms we met," he says.

Once Fernandez and his team picked the LMS, the implementation of it took 90 days. Pathlore staff integrated the LMS with Gundersen Lutheran's HRIS and spent several days instructing training staff on the use of the software.

RESULTS

The LMS cut OSHA training time at the healthcare network by more than 50 percent. Most employees were able to finish each two-hour OSHA course in less than 30 minutes by taking the instruction online via the LMS. By the end of 2002, Fernandez reported that 80 percent of the workforce had used the system to complete the required OSHA courses. "There's still work to do to, but the short fall isn't a shortcoming of the LMS--we have to tie compliance to job performance, too," he says.