Learning
Credentialing
Compliance
Lakesha Rivera oversees and creates clinical guidelines, policies and procedures, and manages a clinical operations team. The clinical operations team is heavily involved in compliance in regards to trainings, OSHA, and keeping staff up to date.
Her organization spanning over 60 practices has been with MedTrainer since 2018. They currently have 1,712 active users in the system.
What were your biggest challenges with compliance? And tell me about specific challenges that you’ve faced with multiple locations.
It was so disjointed. Some locations were using OSHA manuals, but they were outdated. Others were using their biohazard company. Everyone was all over the place, and we needed to streamline this.
What were some of your challenges with training staff across so many locations?
We started getting phone calls from practice managers about different types of courses. Do you know of a course for phone etiquette? Do you know the course for front desk staff? Do you know anywhere we could get training for xyz for our provider? Those phone calls became more frequent, so I started to do homework on what was out there.
Coming from the hospital system, I know about all the online trainings, and we did look into those, but some are so robust and too much for what we needed, and of course, the cost was another thing. We kept searching for what would fit and work well for us to make everything streamlined online and offer multiple courses that are needed.
“This is a little more than just some courses.”
How did you hear about MedTrainer?
A practice manager actually introduced MedTrainer to us. What impressed us was the fact that not only were their courses available, there was also SDS management, the folders and everything are paperless, the incident reporting, it was just like on and on and we were like, “This is a little more than just some courses.”
What is your favorite feature about the MT Learning platform?
My favorite feature I think is the customized course. The fact that you can actually monitor and see, okay this was assigned, but it was not completed. We can see where students are not compliant. It really has been a lifesaver.
The other thing that we really liked was the fact that we are able to have customized courses so we can just send over a PowerPoint or videos recorded, webinars, what have you, and that be a course. That was really impressive to us and really kind of hooked us in.
In what way are you using MedTrainer that you didn’t anticipate?
Training certain aspects of the EMR. We just recorded it and plopped it into MedTrainer, so then new staff comes in, here you go. It doesn’t have to be done over and over again.
The payroll department used it because we switched the payroll system, so there are six or seven different systems, and depending on what area you are in, there’s different training. If you missed the window of opportunity to get that one-on-one training, it was easier to put it into MedTrainer, especially when I think about the turnover of employees. They can easily just be assigned those courses.
“95 to 97 percent of my time has been saved.”
In terms of the percentage of time that you spend in your role dealing with compliance, do you feel you’ve been able to reduce that and take some of it off of your plate?
95 to 97 percent of my time has been saved.
Before it was emails and papers. I made spreadsheets, checklists, and all that jazz. It was ridiculous, honestly. But now, it’s simply just all right there. I literally click on a division and see the courses that have been assigned, what’s overdue, and what’s future assigned, or just run a report. Literally a game-changer.
You mentioned the company has grown from 40 practices in 2018 to more than 60 currently. How has adapting to managing compliance in a growing company been for you?
Honestly, it hasn’t been a challenge. With having MedTrainer and all of the courses that are available, it really opens up their [practice managers] eyes to see like, “Oh wow, this is what my staff needs.”
It is just endless. We mandate OSHA, HIPAA, workplace violence, but I always say, “Don’t stop there. There’s phone etiquette, customer service, PPE, COVID, DEI.” We push those courses and it’s actually made it easier, and people are loving it, they really are. They see the list of all the trainings that are available and they’re like, “This is relevant for front desk staff, this is relevant for my clinical staff, this is relevant for my billing staff, and so on.”
What was your experience shopping for compliance solutions?
Being from the hospital system, there were certain ones that we knew of already and we looked at those and vetted those, but the price range was a little crazy. They didn’t offer what we wanted either. I don’t want to say too clinical, but it was too much for the hospital setting in a sense. They didn’t have the other stuff for the front desk, the billing, customer service, the DEI, or workplace violence [training], you know things like that.
“Any work you’re taking away from HR just makes the implementation so much easier.”
How was the experience of implementing MedTrainer across the different practices?
We always gave managers the autonomy to choose training dates. Having that flexibility with MedTrainer was amazing. That helped a lot because with 40 plus practices, I can’t dictate when the practice managers will be available, so that was 100 percent helpful. Also, always having written instructions to go along with training.
The other thing that was great is we got the list of all the employees from HR and then sent that to MedTrainer for uploading, so any work you’re taking away from HR just makes the implementation so much easier.
Advice to others who might be considering our product?
I would say definitely request a guest user. Go into it, play in a platform, take courses, create folders, utilize the incident reporting, print out reports, and do everything on the platform that you can just to see what life is like. I would suggest a week, take your time.
That’s what we did, we took our time, and it was a few of us that did it to make sure to get different perspectives and opinions. Allow not just the main decision-makers but a practice manager or even an employee that will be a student to do it as well. Don’t always rely on the major decision-makers of the organization. You need to definitely utilize other people because they see things differently.
The other thing I would suggest is utilizing customer service. I’ve never had a call for customer support, but I’ve recommended practices call customer support. I’ve heard it’s great but see what that is like too.
The last thing I would advise is to think about what else are you really looking to get out of a compliance training aside from courses. There are a lot of places that do that, but what else is there?
There are a lot of practices out there that are still using paper. What would your advice to those people be?
No! Oh my gosh. My advice would be, literally try MedTrainer for one week. Totally use it for whatever you’re doing with paper. Create folders, have your staff in there, put some fake staff in, and if you’re keeping their credentials, upload them into MedTrainer. You can create a folder, upload everything, and bada boom, bada bing! You will not have folders or papers in your office anymore.
With so many people leaving the field do you feel like having a platform like MedTrainer makes it easier to hire people and retain them?
For the tech generation, of course, because that’s all they know, so it’s definitely like, oh my god this is great. Even for our providers, the younger providers, this is easy breezy for them. They just log on to their phone and get it done. It’s awesome.
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