Education
The Educated Edge
Why professional education is important and where to find it.
- By David Kopf
- Mar 01, 2010
In today’s homecare market, information can mean the difference between success and failure. Every member of an HME provider’s team must be wellversed in a wide variety of topics in order to ensure they provide the best service possible, while ensuring proper regulatory and certification compliance. Moreover, provider management and staff must constantly strive to develop news skills andabilities that can help them find new efficiencies and leverage new opportunities.
So how can providers gain new knowledge and skill sets that will help them design a strategy for success? Professional education. Courses for both staff and management will help providers increase their on-the-job performance and ensure operational efficiencies by learning and implementing best practices and new technologies in their business.
And let’s not forget that for many HME professionals, continuing education is required to maintain certifications and licensure for various areas of specialization, as well as for accreditation. Credentials for occupational therapists, physical therapists, and respiratory therapists, for example require their holders regulatory obtain specific number of course units. This ensures they are current on new technologies and innovations that help provide better patient outcomes.
Where CMS accreditation is concerned, each of the accreditation organizations outlines continuing education requirements to which accredited providers must adhere. The provider must ensure staff gain new and continuing knowledge of their business and marketplace.
Education also is a key differentiator. Patients and referral partners feel a certain level of trust working with a business that they know has made a commitment to stay up to date on industry and healthcare developments and changes. They know that provider is constantly trying to improve service. This can cement lifelong relationships with patients, but helps raise the profile of the industry by demonstrating a rock-solid commitment to care quality. And for new patients, professional education and certification instantly negates and fear of the unknown and creates a level of trust that might not otherwise be there.
The same holds true for referral partners. A provider that ensures staff and management are trained and credentialed will more easily mesh with a potential referral partner, and will build even stronger relationships with their existing referring physicians and healthcare professionals. Referral partners want to know the HMEs they work with are investing in their staff’s education on an ongoing basis, because they know it will result in better care for their patients. What better way to set yourself apart from the competition?
Getting Schooled
A good starting point is to identify potential sources of HME professional education. For starters there are HME membership organizations. If a provider is a member of a purchasing group or member services organization in the industry, such as the VGM Group or The MED Group those organizations typically provide education services.
Also, there are independent professional education sources serving the HME industry and trade events, such as Medtrade, that offer education opportunities, as well.
Lastly, providers should investigate as to whether or not their manufacturers provide courses. Many vendors are offering HMEs courses as a long-term strategy to make their customers more successful, and thus bigger buyers. So they see professional education as an investment. Moreover, vendor-driven education is particularly helpful when it comes to product- and technology-specific training and education.
For instance, Pride Mobility has pursued offering professional education to its providers for a decade. Currently, it offers courses through Pride University and Quantum University, for its rehab business unit, Quantum Rehab. (See, “HME Professional Education Sources,” below, for a list of some key sources of homecarespecific professional education available to providers.)
Once a provider determines which education sources are available, it should determine which staff should get trained, and should provide ample resources and documentation on the various course available, so that those staff members can determine what course will most help them. Also, provider management should help staff consider which courses might also broaden their horizons. For instance, clinical staff could also benefit from better understanding claims and billing processes, or other more operations- or business-focal job functions.
Likewise, management should also take courses. In the same way education will broaden employees’ horizons and knowledgebase, it will do the same for management. Various course are available on how to coach providers staff, as well as courses on customer service, employment law, leadership and business planning, for example.
Once the provider determines which staff and managers will get what training, the next step is to not delay. Start scheduling the courses and ensure everyone commits to taking his or herself — and the HME business — to the next level.
HME Professional Education Sources
DMETRAIN
www.dmetrain.com
DMETRAIN provides a variety of online professional education courses to HME industry professionals, and aims to provider course content that goes deeper into industry specifics. For example, its courses cover customer service, billing, collections, equipment delivery, management, inventory control, pharmacy services,safety, and compliance with federal and state laws and accreditation regulations.
For continuing education, DMETRAIN provides free AARC CRCE and BOC CPE to its subscribers. It also is automatically integrated into your respiratory therapists’ and orthotic and prosthetic employees’ course curriculums. DMETRAIN also maintains a California Board of Registered Nursing license to provide Continuing Education to nursing staff
Companies are charged per employee, per year. Each employee is prorated for the number of months heor she was active on DMETRAIN, so the provider isn’t penalized for hiring and firing employees.
MED University, The MED Group
www.meduniversity.net
MED University provides HME industry-specific education in what it calls a Master Program, which is geared to provide key skills needed by various staff positions at an HME business. Providers enroll staff online into various courses, and then those staff members can go online and begin learning. As they take the online courses, they are provided with note-taking tools, and can also print out the entire course tools,if they choose. When they are ready, they can take an online test.
MED University offers more than 100 courses that include CEU/CRCE Hours across a broad range of tracks. The tracks include: Basics of Customer Service; HME & Services Overview; Safety: Foundations of Reimbursement; Sales; Driver/Delivery Technician; Master Repair Technician; Orthotics; Professional/Personal Development; Management in the HME Industry; RTS/RESNA Rehab Courses; Reviews of Cook and Hussey, Assistive Technologies; Respiratory; and Refresher and Annual Reviews. In terms of job function, the courses are targeted to various HME professionals, including billing specialists; CSRs; drivers and delivery technicians; HME professionals; HME warehouse professionals; HME managers; repair technicians; RTS; and sales. Many ofthe courses are accepted by various professional groups, such as RESNA, NRRTS and AARC, as well.
VGM Education, VGM Group
www.vgmeducation.com, www.mov-e.org
A division of the VGM Group, VGM Education provides a variety of educational offerings to HME providers. It partners with various industry experts to provide training on the latest products, technology and services available. All in all, it offers more than 375 online courses across three e-learning platforms: VGMU, VGMU Extension and mov-E (medical online video education). VGMU functions as a sort of online “college” for the HME industry, offering HME and rehab-specific training courses written by industry professionals; continuing education delivered to the desktop; and 24-hour online access to courses and student records. VGMU Extension is an e-learning website that is offered through VGM Education in partnership with echelon, a division of Florida Hospital College of Health Services. The mission of echelon is to serve the continuing education needs of healthcare industry professionals. The courses have been approved for continuing education credit by nearly 20 accreditors, such as the American Healthcare Radiology Administrators, the Florida Board of Nursing, the Florida Board of Nursing Home Administrators and the Florida Board of Occupational Therapy.
Medical online video education (mov-E) provides online video training for the HME industry. The video courses range in length from 10 to 35 minutes, and offer testing and interactive feedback to participants. Features include comprehensive training with CEU and competency certificates; refresher course content that is full-motion video; and video testing with immediate feedback.
Team@Work
www.teamatworkcoaching.com
Team@Work brands itself as a business coaching organization, and in that vein tries to assist HME providers to not only provide education for their staff, but create an education plan that helps business managers and owners develop coaching skill sets that will help them pick the best education plans for their teams.
Its courses cover areas such as customer service, delivery, communications, operations, LEAN process, and sales. The company is in the process of becoming a member of IACET, International Association for Continuing Education. This is a process that should be completed relatively soon, most likely by the timethis issue hits your mailbox.
The company also offers Team@Work U, a series of continuing education workshops focused on the business and medical education needs of physician offices, discharge planners, social workers, and other medical professionals. Rather than give referral partners souvenir pens, providers can offer this service toreferral sources free of charge to them.
Pride University and Quantum University
www.pridemobiltiy.com
Pride Mobility launched Pride U and Quantum U to provide initial and continuing information and industryknowledge to its providers, therapists, internal team members, and consumers.
The courses include contact hours (CECs) and continuing education units (CEUs) required for many state and national governing bodies. The CEU courses offered by Pride U and Quantum U were approved by the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.
Seminar course curriculum for 2010 includes various industry course topics, including funding, technical service, retail mobility, advanced electronics, seating and positioning, and RESNA preparations. The courses address various levels of informational need, from beginner to advanced. Pride U & Quantum U deliver their courses through various formats: A national seminar tour; interactive on-site seminars; live
webinars; and online training.
CARES, Invacare Corp.
www.invacare.com/education
Invacare CARES program (Clinical and Reimbursement Education Series) offers a variety of rehab-related courses on seating and positioning, manual mobility, power mobility, electronics programming and powered seating systems with specific courses tailored to specific learning levels, from beginner to intermediate to advanced. Invacare also offers CARES programs for government relations, respiratory therapy and technical training. These courses are CEU certified.
Rehab course subject matter includes Basic Seating Principles; an introduction to Power Mobility Solutions; and an introduction to Manual Mobility Solutions. These CEUs are accepted by both RESNA and NRRTS for credentialing purposes, and, like Pride Mobility’s courses, are approved by the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. Invacare’s online Respiratory CEU programs are designed to enhance the respiratory care provider’s knowledge of diseases, therapeutic systems and other factors that affect the care of respiratory patients in the home. These programs are intended for respiratory care practitioners, nurses, physicians and others interested in long-term care and management of the chronic respiratory patient. Courses include Ambulatory Oxygen: Keeping Pace with Change; On-Delivery Oxygen Technology: Good for Your Business, Good for Your Patients; Oxygen Conserving Devices; and Current Issues in Home Respiratory Care. The CRCEs for these courses are pending.
In addition to continuing to offering traditional classroom-style, instructor-led courses, Invacare now features a variety of online CEU-based educational programs covering rehabilitation technology, home respiratory therapy, pressure/wound care management, reimbursement best practices, technical training and education and PinDot certification programs.
This article originally appeared in the March 2010 issue of HME Business.
About the Author
David Kopf is the Publisher HME Business, DME Pharmacy and Mobility Management magazines. He was Executive Editor of HME Business and DME Pharmacy from 2008 to 2023. Follow him on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/dkopf/ and on Twitter at @postacutenews.