HealthStream Competency Center

Actively engage healthcare staff in the competency assessment process and
demonstrate connections between learning, competency, and patient outcomes.

Improving patient safety and achieving strategic initiatives puts competency and performance management at the top of every healthcare provider’s list of must-haves. Unfortunately, most organizations’ paper-based processes consume vital resources without allowing valuable analysis and decision making.

Not only were past electronic solutions expensive and complex, but they were designed for performance management, with no capacity for competency management or healthcare specificity. The HealthStream Competency Center (HCC) cost-effectively addresses the urgent need for better competency and performance management with a healthcare-specific, competency-driven solution. Fully integrated with the HealthStream Learning Center (HLC), the HCC was built with healthcare-specific needs in mind and allows customers to take advantage of investments already made in HealthStream. With the combination of the HLC and the HCC, one solution meets the needs of clinical, risk, quality, HR, and executive teams for learning, competency, and performance management. Best of all, the HCC’s flexible design enables organizations to achieve four key goals with competency and performance initiatives:

1. Professional standards used in addition to skills checklists to assess competency
   
2. Evidence of staff effectiveness (a Joint Commission requirement) that is accessible, reportable, and actionable
   
3. Competency assessment data used to target learning activities for the greatest impact
   
4. Performance appraisals based on competency assessments

The HealthStream Competency Dictionary© includes over 1,400 competency statements covering clinical and non-clinical staff.

• More than just a skills checklist, it incorporates knowledge, clinical reasoning, and judgment, along with technical skills
  
• Enables the rapid launch of a standardized competency assessment program and the integration of competency-based performance appraisals
  
• Fully customizable
  
• Allows you to mix and match statements to meet specific unit and/or job role needs
  
• Can be augmented by unlimited customer statements
  

How it can help your organization immediately

• Provides flexibility to create initial and annual competency assessments, performance appraisals, career ladders, reflective development plans, and corrective actions
  
• Fosters organizational excellence with accountability, empowerment, and education
  
• Identifies competency problems for targeted training and learning initiatives
  
• Validates competency for staffing effectiveness
  
• Aligns competency and performance standards with goals
  
• Guides selection of competencies to affect employee development and patient outcomes
  
• Links competency to multiple verification methodologies and foreseeable risks
  
• Provides a process to refine accountability expectations for managers, educators, and employees in the competency process
  
• Engages employees in the competency assessment process by enabling employees to provide verification evidence of achievement to assigned competencies
  
• Encourages growth and mentorship

Additional Features:

• Fully integrated with the HealthStream Learning Center
  
• Role-based access and user-friendly design
  
• Fully customizable assessments
  
• Allows application of a single competency requirement to many different appraisal forms
  
• Supports self assessment, multi-rater peer review (including anonymous), 360˚ reviews, and manager assessments
  
• Supports delegation to alternate raters to oversee the assessment process
  
• Allows multiple rating scales and weighted scoring in a single appraisal
  
• Configurable workflow includes required approvals and comments based on rating levels
  
• Joint Commission-compliant reporting