Company Profile

Norton Healthcare started as a modest, faith-based not-for-profit healthcare system in Kentucky with more than 12,500 employees at five hospitals, 13 Norton Immediate Care Centers, and 90 physician practice locations. The organization has since become a leading healthcare provider with some of the most advanced technologies and well-trained physicians, nurses, and staff.

Norton Healthcare has been nationally recognized for transparency in quality reporting and quality of care. They offer a wide range of comprehensive services, including cancer, orthopedics, cardiovascular, neurological, pediatrics, and women’s services via more than 140 locations and have over $1.5B in annual revenue.

Compliance Challenges

As a regulated healthcare provider, compliance and reporting on staff training to multiple groups—including the Joint Commission and the American Nurses Credentialing Center—had become a burden. Norton Healthcare’s learning management system (LMS) required complex workarounds to produce necessary reports, which consumed staff time and resources and was a distraction to its core mission of providing quality healthcare.

Additionally, Norton Healthcare staff found the previous LMS not only difficult to use, but also incapable of meeting its need for mobility in such an on-the-go and on-demand learning environment.

The Search for the Best LMS Solution

As Norton Healthcare’s compliance and user needs had long exceeded the capabilities of its previous LMS, the organization embarked on an initiative to identify a new provider. It needed a market-leading solution that was capable not only of delivering the robust learning and training its teams desired, but also the comprehensive reporting and audit trails required by regulators and credentialing agencies.

Norton Healthcare began the search by compiling a list of “must-have” functionality to meet its compliance needs and improve usability, as well as a variety of innovative new tools and features expected in a market-leading LMS. Norton Healthcare then held system reviews with the eLearning Development department. It later expanded the effort to include input from other teams such as executive management, nursing staff, end-users, IT, and HR. The goal was to conduct a comprehensive system review that considered the needs of all LMS stakeholders across the organization.

The final list of “must-have” functionality from stakeholder input included:

• Easy system access including Single Sign On (SSO) to give learners direct access and the ability to take training from any location, including at home
• Audit trail to maintain an irrefutable record of administrative actions performed in the system, such as changes to course completion and enrollment status
• Isolation of courseware to prevent the creation of new sessions with outdated class information
• Learning options such as synchronous and asynchronous learning, web-based training (WBT), mobile, and social learning
• Exceptional user experience to keeps users engaged and coming back for additional learning
• Robust and simplified reporting to save time and meet all regulatory requirements
• Self-service and notifications to allow users to easily register for learning and receive reminders of their learning requirements
• Historial data of user learning and certifications from both the previous LMS and the new system for reporting continuity
• Data security to ensure the safety of proprietary resources and user information

Stakeholders also indicated a number of “nice-to-haves” that they would like to see in a new LMS, such as the ability to drop WBT courses begun in error, tracking of external courses, formal training for top-level administrators, social learning, and mobile device support.

The project would also include the movement of years of historical learning and compliance data—several million records—from the old LMS to the new solution. After extensive system reviews, Norton Healthcare selected PeopleFluent Learning as the LMS that would most effectively meet its needs, efficiently support its mission, and meet both compliance needs and user demands

Continuous Innovation

Norton Healthcare debuted PeopleFluent Learning to the organization with a series of preview parties to familiarize staff with the new system’s powerful functionality. Norton Healthcare also created two web-based courses for a more in-depth, hands-on overview of the system.

Thanks to this comprehensive roll-out and the user-friendly experience of PeopleFluent Learning, Norton Healthcare immediately saw both the number of learner complaints and help desk requests decrease. More importantly, it saw an increase in user adoption of the learning system and a rise in the number of end-users completing courses. Administrators and end-users have reported increased satisfaction with the platform and Norton Healthcare has been able to deliver more learning using fewer staff resources.

Administrators can now quickly collect training data and produce reports for the Joint Commission and other regulatory agencies with considerably less effort than previously required. Managers can access learning analytics that provide granular reporting and observe end-users’ learning and training behaviors.

PeopleFluent Learning’s flexibility and capabilities deliver a more individualized and personalized training experience, all of which help Norton Healthcare better fulfill its commitment to the care of its patients and the community.