Case Study: Confluence Health – Learning Management System Certifications Deployment

Client Challenge

Implement a new method of tracking certifications effectively in their current Cornerstone Learning Management System to maximize the investment in their Cornerstone platform. 

Confluence Health was looking for a more efficient and effective way to better track employees who required retraining for certification. Their current process had staff trying to pull reports for active and inactive courses to find the user’s latest completion date in order to assign the appropriate training. Confluence Health found this process was time consuming, ineffective and inaccurate. The team was also looking for a Dashboard to help manage the upcoming due dates for each user in each certification. 

For healthcare organizations, ensuring their employees and staff obtain the necessary certifications for their job role along with keeping those certifications current is an imperative function of their business. Allowing staff to work with expired certifications can potentially expose a healthcare facility to a multitude of negative impacts including severe fines and /or legal action. Having a system that notifies employees and contracted staff of pending certifications along with the progress towards, and the completion of, required certifications is critical for the organization’s overall success. 

In implementing the Cornerstone Learning platform as their learning management solution, Confluence Health benefited from the reporting and dashboard features Cornerstone’s solution provides for managing assigned training courses. Confluence Health wanted to employ this same strategy by creating a Dashboard to help manage the upcoming due dates for each user in each certification. In doing so, Confluence Health hoped to be more proactive in several areas. First, they hoped to quickly identify staff with expired certifications and provide ample opportunity to allow staff to quickly bring their certifications current. Secondly, Confluence Health needed a means to report staff unable or refusing to bring their certifications current for corrective action. And lastly, Confluence Health hoped to use the dashboard to notify staff in advance of any upcoming expiration dates to allow users to complete renewals timely. 

The next big challenge then became: Can we implement the certification tracking solution we need through our current Cornerstone solution to maximize the investment we have already made into Cornerstone?  

Being able to run reports displaying the status and current completion date across a multitude of certifications from their employees and contracted staff’s transcripts proved challenging, ineffective, and incorrect exposing Confluence Health to potentially experiencing negative ramifications if deemed non-compliant.  

ANSWER: eSkillz – A trusted partner known for its best-in-industry consultative expertise and best practices.

By collaborating with the Confluence Health team, eSkillz consultants provided Confluence Health with the certification tracking solution they needed by: 

• Performing an extensive portal review to determine the purchased features that were part of their Cornerstone solution.  This review confirmed Confluence Health had purchased Certification Management and were not utilizing this feature. 
• Designing and delivering a test case to show Confluence Health the possibilities and power of Cornerstone’s Certifications feature could provide them for easier and more effective means to track the status of certifications by certified dates. 
• Incorporating best practices to provide Confluence Health the reporting outputs needed to minimize potential future penalties resulting from employees no longer compliant due to having expired certifications.

eSkillz Solution

eSkillz enabled, configured, and trained the Confluence Health team on the Cornerstone certification management solution Confluence Health needed and had included with their purchase of Cornerstone Learning. eSkillz expertise helped Confluence Health maximize their Cornerstone investment by configuring their Certifications feature to display the most current date on certifications within the thousands of transcript records they are required to keep on file. 

 Our adept, versatile consultants employed their valued industry-wide knowledge and best practices to thoroughly perform an extensive review of Confluence Health’s current Cornerstone portal. In reviewing the client portal, eSkillz found they had access to the Certification Management in the portal. Since Confluence Health was not utilizing this purchased feature, they were forgoing all the benefits that it could provide once the historical records were properly coded with the most recent completion dates. eSkillz consultants designed and deployed a proof of concept with one specific Certification in the testing environment (Pilot). eSkillz configured the policy criteria for training requirements and the required renewal schedule, in order to enroll users into the necessary learner pathways based on their most recent completions to provide users the opportunity to obtain their required certifications. eSkillz also created reports with charts in Reporting 2.0 so management could easily identify and measure users who were expired, in progress, or certified. eSkillz additionally published these reports to Dashboards so the visual representation of moving to this new feature could be realized. 

Results

The expertise eSkillz shared with Confluence Health broadened their use of Cornerstone functionality to create an easier solution for tracking certification status while optimizing their Cornerstone investment. 

The collaboration between eSkillz and Confluence Health led to great success for the Confluence Health team. By sharing our expertise, eSkillz removed the ‘unknown’ and fear surrounding using the Certifications feature for the Confluence Health team. From the discovery and design process, to configuring the functionality, to training their learning administrators, eSkillz supported the Confluence team at every step. 

To date, Confluence Health is now officially tracking and denoting three Certifications in their live Production environment. Their management staff are utilizing the valuable Reports and Dashboards to go with each Certification to confirm employees and contract workers are staying current with their required certifications. Making the shift to utilizing Certifications has allowed Confluence Health to realize greater efficiencies and improved tracking, along with a large increase in excellent time savings to the team allowing them to reinvest this time into additional critical processes. With a more robust certification tracking solution in place, the Confluence Health team greatly reduced the potential for negative fiscal impacts or legal ramifications to ensue from employees and contractors working without current certifications on file. 

“Wow. I did a few today and it was amazing! eSkillz is awesome and I appreciate you helping me have a leaner process with [certifications].”
— Melanie P.

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