Feather River Hospital and HealthStream Competency Center

Impact:

Feather River Hospital selected the HealthStream Competency Center to meet its specific requirements of increased employee and volunteer education, training, and competency. It has experienced the following impacts:

• Saved over 1,000 directors’ hours per year
• Thousands of dollars saved from reduced paper, filing, and copying expenses
• Reduced corporate compliance audit from two weeks to three hours
• Saved over 1,000 directors’ hours per year
• Thousands of dollars saved from reduced paper, filing, and copying expenses
• Reduced corporate compliance audit from two weeks to three hours

The Challenge:

Established in 1950, Feather River Hospital, part of the Adventist Health Network, is a 100-bed facility, staffed by over 160 physicians and 1,250 employees, serving Paradise, California, and neighboring communities. The Volunteer Services Program at Feather River is essential to hospital operations. Volunteers contribute at least 100 hours each per year, working in roles based on their interests and skills. In 2013, 449 volunteers provided 68,171 hours of service, some in fund generating capacities. As a result, the Volunteer Services Program has been able over time to make monetary contributions to the hospital. Past bequests have benefited patients and employees by funding multiple initiatives, including completion of a new emergency room.

Managing the competencies of staff and volunteers had become too cumbersome to be effective. The hospital’s manual process generated approximately 24,000 pieces of paper per year and incurred additional costs for filing and copying. The hospital’s ability to provide required information to accreditation agencies and the Adventist Health corporate organization used many employee resources and was also inefficient. Feather River Hospital needed to move from a manual, paper-based process to a more efficient, electronic competency management solution for creating, managing, assessing, tracking, and reporting.

Solution:

Feather River Hospital selected the HealthStream Competency Center because it offered the best solution for meeting their specific requirements of increased employee and volunteer education, training, and competency. The education and training departments realized the value and need for implementing HealthStream’s automated Competency Center but had a major problem—how to pay for the solution.

The education and training department of Feather River Hospital approached Ms. Rebecca Williams, Director of Volunteer and Retail Services, about the idea of obtaining the funds from Volunteer Services. Ms. Williams, in collaboration with Carrie Lambert, Manager of Education and Training, developed a presentation to the Board of Volunteers which outlined the benefits and cost of the HealthStream Competency Center. The request then had to be voted on by all of those attending the board meeting, which included over 200 volunteers, who voted unanimously to fund the project. Feather River Hospital began implementation of the HealthStream Competency Center in 2014.

Results:

Feather River Hospital has now saved over 1,000 directors’ hours per year. It has also saved thousands of dollars saved from reduced paper, filing, and copying expenses. Lastly, the corporate compliance audit has been reduced from two weeks duration to three hours.