Award-winning education program produces dramatic time and cost savings

About the Customer

North Mississippi Health Services provides care across 24 counties in north Mississippi and northwest Alabama. The health care system includes seven hospitals, a regional network of more than 70 primary and specialty clinics, six urgent cares, four nursing homes, home health services and telehealth.

Challenge

Provide the best education possible and respond quickly to change – these are important drivers for any facility, but at North Mississippi Health Services, it is a mantra that led the education team to continually strive for better ways to meet employee education needs. Most recently, they decided to undertake a massive project to review all of their homegrown course material and incorporate the SafetyQ modules to eliminate content redundancy and find areas for improvement. This was also coming at a time when the system was changing their accreditation guidelines, making it imperative that their new modules met all requirements.

Solution

The team worked with HealthStream to go over the acute care learning plans, which were then rolled out to both patient-facing and non-patient-facing clinical teams. They immediately appreciated the interactive content, the test-out option, and the large pool of questions available for pre- and post-tests. They decided to launch their review with internal content experts, who thoroughly compared each SafetyQ module against their own training to ensure the best possible final product. The process took six months, but produced a streamlined and cohesive product with interactive learning modules and test-out options that would reduce completion times significantly.

Results

NMHS was able to reduce the time for annually required education from 833 minutes to 537 minutes, resulting in an approximate cost reduction of $875,000. The results were so impressive the team submitted them for the annual internal NMHS IMPACT Top Quality Improvement award, which is the highest possible quality award within the system. Eighteen teams across all service lines submitted their results which were blind rated by an internal team of judges based on the criterion-based matrix, so each team had an equal chance of winning. The education team proudly notched their first win which, according to Beth Frick, demonstrated the practical and immediate impact of the program in terms of time and cost savings.