6 Questions to Ask When Selecting a Healthcare LMS

Finding the right healthcare learning management system (LMS) for your organization can be a daunting task, as there are many out there to choose from and each one offers a different combination of features. With that in mind, we’ve compiled the six most important questions for healthcare organizations to ask when selecting an LMS.

1. Is the learning management system designed to optimize your content?

This is one of the most important questions to consider, since the primary function of your LMS is to help your employees get the most value possible from your training content. Determine whether the LMS is designed to work well with the learning content you’ll be assigning and managing, including whether it:

• Supports the types of content you’ll be most likely to assign (and in the proper formats), whether that’s online lessons, quizzes, downloadable documents, live webinars, microlearning, SCORM files, or continuing education.
• Comes pre-loaded with a high-quality content library and templated training paths. While it’s certainly possible to add your pre-existing or future content to a standalone LMS, you’ll likely experience better ease of use with an LMS that is specifically designed to work with your training content. Often, adding content to a standalone LMS requires additional procedural and technical steps.

2. Does the learning management system meet your training needs?

Be sure to right-size your LMS to your organization and ensure that it will serve your needs without being too top heavy. It should offer all the features you need and none that you don’t. From there, identify your audience and primary goals, such as:

• Improving new-hire onboarding to reduce time to productivity and increase competency.
• Creating ongoing continuing education tracks for entry-level to seasoned providers to improve outcomes.
• Automating and tracking compliance training to mitigate risk.
• Launching professional development or leadership programs to engage staff and improve retention.
• Providing board certification exam preparatory courses or specialty certificates to promote career advancement and specialization.

Once you’ve identified the most likely use cases for your LMS, cross check the features of any LMS you’re interested in with the ways you intend to use it.

3. Is the learning management system scalable?

If you anticipate that your team or organization will grow, ensure that your LMS is economically and technically scalable to accommodate your evolving needs. Here are some foundational qualities of a scalable LMS:

• The LMS can handle large numbers of learners and data without bogging down, even in low bandwidth environments.
• Workflows can be automated to make key functions simple and fast to perform.
• The LMS integrates with important business and HR systems.
• Users can be easily organized into groups with different training tracks and permissions.
• The user interface is intuitive and efficient.
• Reporting capabilities are robust enough to help you accurately assess the performance of your training programs as your organization changes and grows.
• Security remains strong even as you increase the volume of users, learning materials, and data, and includes the ability to set user permissions for performing actions within the system.
• The LMS includes cloud-based functionality to make it easier to roll out and scale.
• Pricing plans remain reasonable as your organization adds additional users.

4. Is the learning management system flexible?

Does the LMS allow for customization and personalization? This might include the ability to add your own branding, images, and terminology, or to upload your organization’s own content in a variety of formats, such as custom learning assessments and live events.

Using an LMS that comes pre-loaded with well-designed training content is an excellent way to help your organization save time and improve clinical expertise. But if the LMS also allows you to customize content when necessary, you’ll have even greater agility in responding to the individual learning needs of your users.

5. Is the learning management system user-friendly and efficient?

You can help save valuable time for your admins and learners by selecting an LMS that simplifies and automates the essential functions of assigning learning content, reporting on training initiatives, and tracking completion. For each of these functions, we recommend that your LMS include the following features for better ease of use.

Assigning content:

• Intuitive learning-track builder that allows admins to easily build and assign training to multiple user groups.
• Course builder that gives you multiple engagement types, including video, interactive content, downloads, quizzes, and assessments.
• Notifications of assignment of programs to staff to ensure engagement.

Reporting on training functionality:

• Real-time reporting that allows admins to immediately identify noncompliance across the organization in a single view and easily notify users.
• Ability to easily audit learning progress and download reports that can be submitted for compliance requirements.

Tracking completion:

• A robust visual dashboard that allows users to quickly view their progress and remaining training.
• Integrated email notifications that remind users to complete courses.

6. Is the learning management system easy to implement?

Finally, you’ll want to make sure that the healthcare LMS you select is straightforward and intuitive to implement from the get-go due to ease of integration with other products; readily available IT support; and clear, effective training for your internal LMS administrators and users.

The MedBridge Healthcare Learning Management System

The MedBridge Learning Management System offers an industry-leading content library, intuitive administrative features, and powerful reporting capabilities. It includes over 2,000 high-quality continuing education, soft skills, leadership, and compliance courses for healthcare organizations across home health, hospital, inpatient rehab, and private practice settings. These engaging, video-based courses are taught by industry-leading experts and designed to help improve clinical excellence, quality of care, and patient outcomes. The intuitive learning platform also offers a custom content upload tool and integrates with HR systems for easy data sync and Single Sign-On (SSO). The MedBridge LMS makes reporting, assigning, and tracking training incredibly simple with intuitive dashboards, automated workflows, and integrated email notifications.

Speak to a MedBridge team member to learn how other healthcare organizations are leveraging MedBridge to reduce time to productivity, improve staff retention, and drive better care.