How Training Initiatives Helped Empower and Prepare Baylor Scott and White Health for COVID-19 (Part 3)

Part 3 of 3: Jerrie Rankin, VP of Operational Informatics with Baylor Scott & White Health, and Nicholas Edwards, Senior Manager Enterprise Technical Training and Support, Baylor Scott & White Health, join CHIME Media for a podcast to talk about how training initiatives helped empower and prepare their teams for the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ryan Seratt, Director of Training with 314e, chats with Jerrie and Nicholas about this project, as 314e is a partner with their team.

The following is Part 3 of 3 blog posts of the full transcript for our recent CHIME Media podcast.

Click here to read Part 1, and click here to read Part 2.

Click here to listen to the Podcast recording on CHIME’s website

Epic End Users Are the Big Winners

Ryan Seratt: How about your end users? How are they experiencing your solution?

Nicholas Edwards: Our end users are really the big winners in all of this. In addition to having access to more training services and materials overall, we’ve reduced our training time spent in the classroom by at least 40%. This means our Doctors, nurses, patient access, and other team members now spend less time on-boarding. They’re able to begin impacting patient lives quicker than before. And on the financial side, those hours in training saved equates to millions of dollars in salaries saved each year for an organization of our size.

Another efficiency for end users that was on our u Perform roadmap included integration with Epic. The integration reduces the amount of time end users spend searching for training materials. While this was on our roadmap for later this year, Covid-19 definitely accelerated that roadmap. In collaboration with IS, we were able to fast-track this change through our IS governance process, collaborate with the appropriate Citrix team members and Epic analysts, and put a link to COVID-19 training materials and other related information in the Epic patient header. We placed it in the patient header because it’s a centralized place that cannot be modified by end users, and every frontline care team member will see it. As a result, our hits to the learning library have risen by 250%, actually over 250%, since putting the button in the patient header.

We include not only Epic tip sheets but also links to policy changes, care recommendations and links to other websites. It’s really a one-stop shop for all things COVID-19 related, and our physicians and nurses have really loved this. As Jerrie mentioned, they no longer have to go searching for an email or try to find an Internet site to get the information they need. Instead, they can just click on the link during their normal workflow.

In support of our frontline team members, we were able to create approximately 50 unique cross-training curricula to support COVID-19, as well. We quickly determined that we needed to ensure our training solution would allow for our nursing team members to work in the ICU and ED. Within a day, we had cross-training curricula developed for these two areas, and this resulted in hundreds of our nursing team members being able to float to these areas. We started with nurses. But as I said, we created approximately 50 curricula that span nursing, physicians, ancillary, and patient access team members. We were able to take existing curricula and create fast-track training courses to assist with flexing team members to areas in need of support. We’re still creating more courses as needed. But at this point, we’re able to create an entirely new course in one day in support of our organization’s needs.

Epic Training Within End Users’ Workflows

Ryan Seratt: Wow, that’s impressive! And do you know how many Epic clients have integrated uPerform® and Epic?

Nicholas Edwards: Now, not to toot my own horn, but we’re amongst the first to do this sort of integration, and it’s pretty, pretty cool. Ancile does have a growing healthcare community, and they’re in the Epic App Orchard. You know, we were able to lean on our Epic resources and other Ancile community members for advice and questions. But it does feel pretty cool to be part of a group that’s doing things on the cutting edge of professional learning and development.

Ryan Seratt: Jerrie, what’s next for Baylor Scott & White Health in the use of uPerform® and computer-based training?

Jerrie Rankin: Well, the future. Yes, we are starting to get very excited about all the potential that we could use this for. Our first plan is to repurpose the Covid-19 button. Hopefully, we’ll get to do that sooner rather than later. We’re going live with Storyboard in September. So, we would like to repurpose that because we know that we will want to give people direct access to training. We’re hoping to do that with the Storyboard.

Secondly, we’re going to be collaborating with IS and informatics to kind of determine where we should integrate into Epic, because we know there is a lot of opportunity there. We want to make sure and do that strategically. In fact, placing the COVID-19 button in the patient header has been so successful that we’re now integrating training materials in other areas. So, like I mentioned before, we’re starting with the video visit workflow. Since our providers and patients have been challenged with adopting this technology quickly, by putting training materials directly in the video visit encounter navigator, we have been able to provide training materials at the fingertips of our providers. Now, they can kind of do some good old-fashioned on-the-job training. It’s not learning from a colleague or maybe some bad habits, but they’re getting direct access to training documents that have been approved by our Epic governance committees. They’re right at their fingertips, right in their workflow. This has been really well received, and it gives us some real confidence about how we could implement this further.

Reducing Help Desk Calls

Jerrie Rankin: Another thought is our collaboration with IS. We think we can help reduce the level one Help Desk calls. How do we take a look at what they’re receiving? What are those topics? How can we use uPerform® to put content in the appropriate workflows so we can keep those calls away from the help desk from the very beginning? We’re excited to work with them on that.

Getting the Right Information to End Users

Jerrie Rankin: I think one of the things that I’m the most excited about is that this helps us address one of our biggest challenges: How to get information to the end users? I mean, to the front lines. You know, we all have newsletters, and while newsletters are good, they’re really not the answer. We know that context-based assistance right within the workflow is a better solution. I mean, we can get changes out to leaders through our leader channels. We can get them to the physician leaders and the operational leaders. But oftentimes, it doesn’t filter down to the frontline user who needs it every day. So, this is going to give us an avenue to put that information right where they need it in their workflow, and that that is really exciting to me.

Continuous Improvement of Computer-based Learning Tools

Jerrie Rankin: Lastly, one of the things that I’m looking forward to is the continuous improvement of our computer-based learning tools, just everything that Nick talked about. Not only embedding it in tip sheets and all kinds of things that we have been able to do. You know, I was in operations for over 25 years before joining the informatics team, and I can tell you that getting staff trained quickly and efficiently is a valid business need. It’s something that your operational folks are asking for all the time. Anything that we can do to speed up that process is a huge win for our system.

I just can’t say enough about how proud I am of the job our team has done today, and I’m excited about what’s coming in the future. I really, really appreciate you giving us the opportunity to share this with you today, Ryan.

Ryan Seratt: Absolutely. Well, I’d like to thank you both for taking time to share your story and about how innovative training practices are actively enabling Baylor Scott & White Health to better meet the needs of the patients that you serve.

Jerrie Rankin: Thank you. It’s an honor. Thank you.