Case Studies

Meet careLearning

careLearning is a non-profit organization founded by state hospital associations and is dedicated to delivering online education and talent management solutions for healthcare. With a focus on training, performance, and competency management, careLearning helps healthcare-related organizations of all sizes stay compliant, up-to-date, and ready to meet workforce demands.

Off-the-Shelf Didn't Cut It

In the early days of eLearning, most healthcare organizations lacked a formal online learning infrastructure. Many didn't even provide employees with email access. As a non-profit formed by state hospital associations, careLearning set out to provide a learning solution that could serve both large hospital systems and small community providers alike.

But off-the-shelf LMS vendors weren't a fit. Leading options were too costly, too rigid, and not built for the kind of partnership careLearning needed. The organization was looking for more than just software, they needed a collaborator who would build with them a tailored solution to address an industry problem.

Building the Right Solution Together

careLearning partnered with Avilar and adopted WebMentor LMS^™, not just as a product, but as a framework for their service offerings. Avilar's team worked closely with careLearning to customize the LMS, integrate it with a proprietary Administrative Management System (AMS), and enable a fully rebranded offering.

careLearning's clients—healthcare organizations across the country—use the LMS to deliver online training, track completion, issue certifications, and meet continuing education requirements. The AMS handles employee data, rules, assignments, and reporting, while the LMS powers the learner experience.

In 2010, careLearning also adopted and rebranded WebMentor Skills^™, Avilar's Competency Management System as careSkills, offering competency and performance management capabilities tailored to healthcare roles.

Scaling Impact Across the Healthcare Industry

Today, a diverse array of healthcare organizations, from independent practices to large medical centers, rely on careLearning's portfolio of products. Avilar's flexibility, pricing model, and customer-first mindset made it possible for careLearning to scale their solution while staying true to their mission as a non-profit and member service.

Together, Avilar and careLearning built a long-standing partnership that continues to evolve—one that serves not just their software needs, but real people in all types of healthcare organizations across the country.

"We've been partnered with Avilar since careLearning's inception over 25 years ago, and their flexibility, affordability, and customer service have made all the difference. From the beginning, the Avilar team worked with us to tailor the LMS to our unique needs in the healthcare space, even allowing us to rebrand and resell it as part of our own offering. Their willingness to listen, adapt, and support us as a true partner, not just a vendor, has helped us grow to serve a wide diversity of healthcare organizations. With Avilar, we didn't just get a system—we got a mutually beneficial partnership."
–Peggy Engelkemier, Director of Workforce Development, careLearning

 

Background: The Commonwealth Criminal Justice Academy (CCJA) needed an efficient solution to manage and report student certifications to the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) at the State of Virginia.

Solution: CCJA partnered with Avilar to implement WebMentor LMS. This system enabled online course delivery, accurate tracking of student certifications, and automated reporting to the state of Virginia.

Results: The automation reduced administrative workload, improved reporting accuracy, and allowed CCJA to expand its training reach geographically.

Impact: This successful integration showcases the benefits of customized LMS solutions in enhancing operational efficiency for training organizations.

Read more here: Avilar Blog

As part of the accreditation process, hospitals in the United States are required to provide evidence that nurses and other clinical and allied health professionals have been assessed on critical competencies related to patient care. Typically, these are paper-and-pencil exercises, where employees are assessed on their assigned competencies; the assessment records are then filed for later retrieval during the accreditation inspection. Avilar has partnered with a national hospital training organization serving hospitals in 40 states to automate the process. Avilar worked with the organization and its member hospitals to identify, define and organize clinical and nonclinical roles using skills from the Avilar Competency Model™ and the hardcopy competency assessment forms already in use. Custom assessment grids were developed to enable managers to assess employees online, and dashboards enable managers to monitor progress in each department and across an entire hospital.

Client hospitals are reporting significant benefits, including:

• Greater consistency among departments in the content of competency assessments.
• Ability to track compliance at all levels.
• Ability to monitor employees' recertification dates.
• Ability to search for skill sets to resolve short-term staffing problems.

After experiencing record growth in the size and scope of its organizational mission, this national nonprofit organization worked with Avilar to adapt the Avilar Competency Model™ to reflect the skills needed at all organizational levels to support greater accountability, efficiency and data focus.

• Employees can easily see the skill expectations for their roles.
• Senior leadership can identify high potential candidates for future advancement.
• Analysis of skill gaps is assisting the organization to identify the greatest skill gaps and ensure that sufficient learning resources are in place to meet them.
• Employees and managers are engaging in development dialogs that enable them to discuss skill gaps openly.
• Available learning resources have been mapped to the skills in the competency model, allowing employees to manage their own development.

This large financial services company found itself with numerous spreadsheets and databases that contained information about its employees' experience, certifications, education and interests. There was no centralized database available to put together project teams and identify internal candidates for key positions. Avilar worked with the organization to develop a custom assessment tool that was simple for employees to use.

• The organization now has the ability to collect skills and other related data in one place.
• Managers are able to view skills, experience, certification and other data for all employees across multiple organizations.
• Workforce planners can identify potential skill shortages and overages.

A division of a United States federal agency worked with Avilar to develop a customized development planning tool for participants in its annual intern program. Using an internally-developed competency model, the interns assess themselves at the beginning, mid-point and the end of the year-long program. Their skills are also assessed by their supervisor and mentor, providing a multi-rater view into each intern's skill level.

• The interns can set career goals and select from pre-loaded learning resources to create a customized individual development plan (IDP).
• Mentors can use custom reports to help guide their interns through the assessment and development planning process so they achieve the best possible results.
• Interns can plan career development activities that enable them to advance through their chosen career paths.