KLAS Arch Collaborative Success Pathway—Onboarding EHR Education

Healthcare Delivery Organizations

Optimization Journey: Onboarding EHR Education

1. Review self-examination questions
2. Determine the appropriate delivery method (e.g., at-the-elbow training, self-directed virtual training, in-person classroom training, etc.), timing, and length of each onboarding EHR education course
3. Decide who will create, review, and teach each onboarding EHR education course; involve clinicians in content creation
   1. Evaluate available technology and services that can be used to create and maintain your onboarding EHR education courses (including modifying your EHR vendor’s content to fit your needs as well as utilizing technology and services from third-party software vendors, consulting firms, etc.)
   2. Find engaging EHR educators that understand the challenges clinicians face and are well versed in clinical workflows
4. Identify the tools you will use to track individual EHR learner journeys, including their EHR education needs, participation, gaps, and proficiency levels

1. Build your onboarding EHR curriculum
   1. Identify optimal EHR workflows, including organizational, role, and specialty workflows; verify that onboarding EHR education trains to these workflows
   2. Emphasize the “why”; infuse onboarding EHR education with meaning by showing that the EHR embodies shared clinical workflows, and demonstrate how clinician EHR mastery—including the adoption of optimal workflows—positively impacts and is crucial to patient care, patient safety, other clinicians, and the organization
      1. Include a well-respected leader in onboarding EHR education via a video or in person to emphasize the importance of EHR education and documentation and how these efforts assist clinicians in providing great patient care
   3. Incorporate training exercises and experiences that enable clinicians to learn in the context of patient care (e.g., hands-on activities, simulations, and specific patient-care scenarios, such as medication administration documentation)
2. Ensure your onboarding EHR content is vetted by clinicians who are currently using the EHR in various roles
3. Remove participation barriers by creating a path for clinicians to easily access and engage in onboarding EHR education courses in the correct order and time frame
4. Clearly outline how clinicians can seek help and get answers to their questions, including self-help references, person-to-person resources, and the process for submitting tickets/requesting IT help

1. Gauge training needs via assessments and test-out options for clinicians who have previously used the EHR to avoid unnecessary onboarding EHR education
   1. Regardless of prior EHR experience, all clinicians should participate in organization culture training, learn organization workflows, and be taught specialty-specific and nursing focus area onboarding EHR education
2. Create a formal mentorship/preceptorship program for all roles; pair new hires with an experienced clinician in the same specialty/role/focus area (or close to it)
   1. Outline clear expectations for mentors/preceptors and ensure they are engaging, effective teachers as well as optimal EHR users
3. Establish regular check-in meetings with each new hire at various intervals, such as 30 days, 60 days, and 90 days post-hire, to review information, answer questions, introduce further optimizations, etc.
   1. To understand where new hires would like additional training, ask them to complete a survey before the check-in meeting so trainers can tailor these sessions to individual needs

1. Via a survey, collect post-onboarding feedback from new hires to measure the effectiveness, wins, and gaps of your onboarding EHR education program
   1. Send the survey to new hires 2–3 weeks after the onboarding experience has concluded to ensure that new hires have had real-world experience and can give feedback on key gaps
   2. Specifically ask for feedback on workflows clinicians encountered in their patient care experience that they would like to have been more prepared for
2. Actively iterate onboarding EHR education courses and content based on clinician survey results, help desk tickets, support requests, and EHR data (e.g., Signal, NEAT, Lights-On Network, etc.)
3. Assess trainer quality, effectiveness, and impact via tools such as the Arch Collaborative Trainer Quality Benchmark Survey, your internal surveys and metrics, etc.

Self-Examination Questions—Onboarding EHR Education

On a scale of 1–5, rate your agreement with the following statements (5 means “strongly agree” and 1 means “strongly disagree”):

1. We have an individual or team in place to design, build, and deliver our onboarding EHR education courses.
2. Our onboarding EHR education is easy to access and consume (e.g., via a centralized server location, an LMS, the EHR, etc.) in a manner that is convenient for clinicians.
3. We set the expectation that new clinicians should aim for EHR mastery rather than just proficiency.
4. We clearly articulate the onboarding EHR learner journey to new hires (via an outline, visualization, etc.) so they understand what they will learn on day 1 versus day 3 versus day 90.
5. We have carefully assessed what a new hire can practically absorb during the first few weeks of onboarding EHR education and have tailored our program to include only what clinicians need to know to start in their role in the first few weeks. Then between days 30–90 of the learner journey, we provide tips, tricks, and optimization information.
6. We introduce EHR personalization tools/user settings/widgets at the appropriate time (i.e., after the establishment of foundational workflow knowledge but early enough to leverage these tools in the clinician’s EHR skill development).
7. We create compelling onboarding EHR education for clinicians by incorporating varied options, such as activities, games, brain science, breaks, etc.
8. Clinicians have protected time to complete onboarding EHR education courses.
9. We prepare for clinicians with various levels of technical expertise by offering courses that teach basic, as-needed computer skills.
10. We cover key EHR principles, workflows, etc. multiple times and in different contexts to ensure clinicians better recall information.
11. We clearly spell out corporate and EHR acronyms and define terminology used throughout our onboarding EHR content.
12. To ensure the effectiveness of our onboarding EHR education, we offer a variety of learning methodologies to meet learning preferences (e.g., asynchronous self-directed learning, classroom training, virtual instruction, rounding, 1:1 mentoring, etc.) and carefully consider which method is best suited to the type of training offered.
13. We test new hires’ EHR knowledge to help calibrate, apply, and build on learnings.
14. We encourage new hires to use the teach-back method with each other to cement EHR learnings in long-term memory.
15. We continually assess, measure, and modify our current onboarding EHR education offerings by role to ensure we have a comprehensive and current onboarding EHR education program (e.g., quality, quantity, gaps, topics, delivery method, specialty and focus area, workflows, participation rates by course, etc.).
16. We strongly encourage our clinicians to participate in our vendor’s onboarding EHR education courses.

Total

Scoring

HIT Software Vendors

Self-Examination Questions—Onboarding EHR Education

1. Do you offer onboarding EHR education courses at no additional cost to your customers?
   1. Via self-directed tutorials?
   2. Via live classes?
2. How do you create awareness for your onboarding EHR education offerings?
3. Is your onboarding EHR education easy to access, search, and consume (e.g., via a centralized server location, an LMS, the EHR, etc.)?
4. Do you create compelling EHR education for clinicians by incorporating varied options, such as activities, games, brain science, breaks, etc.?
5. Is your current onboarding EHR education content vetted by working clinicians?
6. How much onboarding EHR education content do you offer to your customers that is specific to physician specialties and nursing focus areas?
7. Do you offer personalization tool/user-setting/widget training to your customers?
8. Can your customers easily modify your onboarding EHR education to fit their needs?
9. How do you assist your customers in identifying onboarding EHR education opportunities at the individual clinician level?
10. Do you provide competency assessments so your customers can gauge their clinicians’ EHR mastery?
11. How often do you assess, measure, and modify your current onboarding EHR education to ensure it is comprehensive and current?
12. How do you assist your customers in developing robust, in-house trainers?
13. What additional consulting services do you offer to help your customers create and maintain their onboarding EHR education curriculum?