Prisma Health's Learning Hub: A Model for Innovative and Multidisciplinary Clinical Education
Prisma Health, the largest not-for-profit healthcare system in South Carolina, serves 1.4 million unique patients annually. Formed in 2017 through the merging of two esteemed healthcare networks, Prisma Health is committed to improving health outcomes. This commitment is reflected in their purpose: Inspire health. Serve with compassion. Education is integral to this purpose, playing a vital role in supporting and developing team members. By innovating a new, multidisciplinary, and centralized model for clinical education, Prisma Health ensures consistent and ever-improving quality of care across the state.
Addressing the Challenges of Outdated Education Models
Prisma Health inherited outdated and costly education models. The old-fashioned bifurcation between learning for nurses and learning for “everyone else” reinforced silos among team members who all play different, but interconnected, roles along the continuum of patient care. This tied up valuable resources not only in the salaries of excess educators, but also in the cost of creating and maintaining duplicative learning materials. There was also no centralized approach to who provided education. For nurses, unit-based educators often tailored learning so specifically to their units that education would lose sight of big-picture synergies between nursing and the rest of the continuum of patient care. For allied health, post-acute and ambulatory services, education often fell to a senior team member within a given department or facility. While these educators may have demonstrated competency or even mastery in a specific area, they might not have possessed the instructional skills or experience needed to effectively develop and deliver educational content. These educators were also frequently pulled into other roles such as monitoring regulatory compliance and even filling in for short-staffed teams.
The Innovation: A Centralized, Multidisciplinary Approach
To meet these challenges, Prisma Health innovated a more organized, comprehensive, and robust approach to clinical education. The new model had to be centralized, integrating educators spread throughout the system into one cohesive team. The model also had to be multidisciplinary, bringing physicians, nurses, allied health practitioners, technical systems, and revenue cycle management under one umbrella, while still meeting their individual needs. At the same time, the model had to be cost-effective and deliver education with a consistent standard of excellence for all team members. Developing and implementing this model would be a tall order for any healthcare organization, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thankfully, Prisma Health's leadership recognized the value of investing in long-term change.This new clinical education model has reenergized focus around Prisma Health's purpose: Inspire Health. Serve with Compassion. Be the difference.
Reimagining the Organizational Structure: Rightsizing and Restructuring
First, by benchmarking against 22 like-sized hospitals, Prisma Health determined that it had an excessive number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees operating as educators. With 161 FTE employees, the education model was not only siloed but also far more costly-even while experiencing poorer training outcomes. So, Prisma Health rightsized clinical education into a team of 71 FTE employees managed through Human Resources. The talent team then supported all displaced team members in finding other opportunities within Prisma Health.
Separate Roles
Next, Prisma Health established separate but complementary roles for the educators: one devoted to instruction and another devoted to creating and maintaining educational content. These roles were combined under the previous model, often causing educators faced with competing priorities to rely on out-of-date materials.
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Building a Multidisciplinary Team: Expertise Across the Spectrum
Next, Prisma Health took learning beyond just the nurse’s scope of work and assembled an all-encompassing team of subject matter experts. Clinical services were grouped together, and the Talent Acquisition team brought in highly skilled educators for nursing, laboratory, paramedic/emergency, pharmacy, radiology/imaging, and respiratory therapy services. Nursing was further subdivided into behavioral health, critical care, emergency, medical and surgical/oncology, post-acute/ambulatory, telemetry/cardiovascular, women’s, and children’s/neonatal services.
Centralizing Education: The Learning Hub
Prisma Health then redesigned the learning experience to better support the education team and those they serve. Prisma Health had been behind in developing effective online learning, with over 5,000 courses made of slide decks that neither engaged learners nor measured their progress. So, they saw launching a new education model amid the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to leverage resources saved by restructuring to build out dynamic, interactive online content for team members. At the same time, Prisma Health went from 15 different learning management systems across Prisma Health to one: the Learning Hub. With just a few clicks, Learning Hub helps team members find courses to take, skills to learn, and career development paths to explore. The system tracks each individual’s learning on a unique transcript and even issues deadline reminders for compliance-mandated trainings.
Benefits of the Learning Hub
The Learning Hub has reduced both the number of required courses for team members as well as compliance issues and related fines. It’s also enabled Prisma Health to tie learning back to the organization’s culture and purpose, incorporating universal themes such as customer service and inclusion into all materials.
Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic: A True Test
As Prisma Health developed and implemented this new education model throughout 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put the work to the test at every turn. However, the restructuring of clinical education allowed Prisma Health to respond to the pandemic quicker and with greater consistency than ever before.
Improved Internal Mobility and Leadership Development
The new model also improved Prisma Health's strategies around internal mobility. All team members now have access to a streamlined process for professional development and skilling up using content in the Learning Hub. Leaders can recommend and assign learning modules to their team members, giving them opportunities to grow for both current and future roles. The model also incorporates physician leadership development, which was previously handled by external vendors.
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Key Outcomes
Through innovating a new model for clinical education, Prisma Health created standardized care for patients across the healthcare system as well as created synergies between all team members along the continuum of patient care. First, Prisma Health rightsized and restructured the education team to better meet the organization’s needs. Next, they brought together a multidisciplinary team of experts who were able to identify redundancies in learning materials as well as variations in practice that had either led to excess costs for the organization or exposed them to undue risk. Finally, Prisma Health leveraged online learning-when teams needed it most-to make learning more accessible for all team members.
Continuing Medical Education
The University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, in partnership with Prisma Health, offers nationally accredited continuing medical education programs through the Accreditation Council of Continuing Medical Education (ACCME). They certify activities for AMA PRA Category 1 credit as well as Maintenance of Certification (MOC) for those boards currently collaborating with ACCME, to provide quality professional development opportunities for clinicians within the health system and affiliated partners. Through this portal, learners can update profiles, register for activities, claim credits, and obtain transcripts for activities certified through this office.
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