Elevate Your Healthcare Compliance Training Program

Gone are the days of boring videos, in-person sessions, and repetitive courses. Today’s healthcare workers expect more from a compliance training program.

For the administrators, compliance officers, and HR professionals tasked with crafting such programs, the challenge is finding a balance between what is legally required and what is practical for their already stretched staff. With compliance risks and expectations at an all-time high, there is a pressing need to go beyond the basics and elevate healthcare compliance training to new heights.

The Basics Of A Healthcare Compliance Training Program

Before we can explore how to enhance your compliance training program, it’s essential to understand its foundational elements. At a minimum, you must include the training specified in all standards adhered to by your organization. Content likely contains patient privacy, data security, workplace safety, and ethical medical practices. Additional training will be required if your organization is accredited and accepts Medicare, Medicaid, or other federal funding.

Tracking employee completion of training is also a necessary part of a healthcare compliance training program. This documentation is crucial for demonstrating compliance with regulatory requirements in case of audits. A surveyor or inspector will often ask for detailed records of all training sessions, including who attended, when, and the content covered.

Use this worksheet to design an effective compliance training program.

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The Need For An Advanced Compliance Training Program

Traditional compliance training methods fail to engage healthcare professionals. Monotonous videos, multiple training logins, and in-house course creation are increasingly proving inefficient or ineffective. Healthcare workers who juggle long hours and emotionally taxing work are naturally predisposed to “compliance fatigue.”

Other challenges include:

• Lack of Personalization: One-size-fits-all training does not account for the nuanced requirements of different roles and departments.
• Rapid Pace of Change: Static content quickly becomes irrelevant due to frequent regulatory changes, leaving staff underprepared and organizations at risk.
• Engagement: A key component, often overlooked, is the significant lack of engagement due to uninspired delivery methods.

6 Strategies to Elevate Healthcare Compliance Training

To combat these challenges and foster a culture of compliance, there are several strategies healthcare organizations can employ.

1. Engaging Learning Techniques: The days of passive learning are over. Adopting interactive techniques like gamification, mobile-friendly courses, and the ability to pause training can significantly increase engagement and knowledge retention. Scenario-based training that is specific to healthcare confronts learners with realistic dilemmas that they can relate to and allows them to make decisions and learn from the outcomes.
2. Customized Content for Various Roles and Care Settings: Customizing content ensures relevance. It’s tempting to grab the easy-to-find generic OSHA training, but employees are likelier to lose interest and feel like it doesn’t apply to them when it isn’t specific to healthcare. This increases the risk of an incident, or improper handling of an incident. It is also important to keep training relevant by role. For example, the requirements for a frontline nurse in the ER differ from those for a back-office accounting staff member. If you assign the same training to all employees, you’re taking more time from patients and running the risk of missing a course that is required for specific employee roles.
3. Content That Meets Multiple Standards: Increasing efficiency is a high priority in most healthcare organizations. An advanced compliance training program uses courses that meet multiple standards. For example, choose a disaster preparedness course that meets the OSHA and CMS emergency preparedness standards, instead of requiring employees to take two separate courses. This either frees up time for clinicians to see more patients or gives them time to complete training in their area of interest.
4. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning: Create an environment that values ongoing education and professional development. Regular updates, refresher courses, and open discussions about compliance should be integral to your organization’s culture. With access to a robust course library, staff can access additional learning opportunities, such as diversity training, leadership development, and more.
5. Offer Continuing Education Credit: Professional development and compliance training can be mutually beneficial. It is a huge benefit to clinicians when healthcare organizations offer CME (continuing medical education) or CE (continuing education) credits at no cost to staff. These courses are required to maintain licensure and can often be very expensive. It’s even possible to offer courses that meet regulatory requirements and qualify for CE.
6. Leverage Technology for Better Accessibility and Efficiency: – Digital platforms make compliance training more accessible with cloud-based access, mobile learning, and automatically updated courses. The compliance training program administrator can greatly increase efficiency with tools like automated course completion reminders, schedulable reporting, and one-click new hire onboarding.

Uplevel Compliance Training With Technology

Transitioning to an elevated compliance training program requires strategic use of technology. Compliance software can streamline this transition, provided it offers features tailored to healthcare needs. When selecting compliance training software, prioritize solutions that offer flexibility, customization, and comprehensive analytics. This ensures your program remains relevant, engaging, and effective in promoting a culture of compliance.

Here are a few features to look for:

• Healthcare-Specific Content: It seems obvious, but healthcare-specific content offers many benefits, in addition to the fact that regulations are often changing and healthcare-specific learning management systems will understand the importance of changing with them.
• Performance Analytics: Tools that assess the competency of individuals and teams, identifying areas requiring additional focus for remediation.
• Accessibility: Cloud-based solutions enable 24/7 access from any location, accommodating the non-traditional hours of healthcare staff.
• Customizable Reporting: Regulators and accrediting organizations are looking for reports with very specific information. Choose a platform that allows you to set up your reports specifically for these surveyors.
• Regulatory Expertise: The software should offer content created and vetted by experts in healthcare compliance.
• User Experience: Healthcare organizations are slow to adopt technology for a reason. Choose a platform with an intuitive interface that fosters engagement and ease of use for all levels of technical proficiency.
• Support and Updates: Round-the-clock technical support and a commitment to staying current with regulation changes.
• Scalability: The system should grow and adapt with your organization, accommodating increasing users and courses.

Ready to take your healthcare compliance training program to the next level? See how MedTrainer can help.