9 Suggestions for Making Healthcare Compliance More Engaging -- Part 1

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021

When an effort is made to keep compliance training engaging, it is more likely to succeed. This blog post, the fourth in a series of four, is based on our webinar, “4 Necessities to Building an Indestructible Compliance Training Program,” in which compliance training experts from HCCS, A HealthStream Company, share their insight and wisdom about using compliance education to strengthen the organizational approach to healthcare compliance. Effective compliance training can help every employee understand their compliance obligations and make them extensions of the compliance team.

HCCS Compliance Courseware Developers Debi Hinson and Kathleen Greene-Batt had plenty of advice for making compliance training more engaging and emphasized new ways to think about the training experience. They suggested incorporation of the following nine key elements:

1.       Gamification

Hinson described the “huge opportunity for creating more engaging compliance training in gamification.” Gamification involves combining the elements of game playing with information elements to encourage participation. Imagine a compliance education environment of multiplayer games where players are ranked based on test scores or where you can rank a department against another department or individuals within a department or just simply against all learners. Training may ultimately be structured so that you attain levels, can advance to the next level, or use other types of gaming like roleplaying, multiple choice puzzles, strategy games, estate games, word searches, and other words games.

2.       Adaptive Learning

Another option for more engaging compliance training is adaptive learning, where education is personalized. This allows learners to experience only the necessary content that they particularly need. After assessing a learner's mastery of the subject, organizations can assign him or her only the courses needed. If they can answer all the questions before the training, it would be appropriate to let them test out.

3.       Relatable Characters

Hinson suggested adding “characters that are relatable” whenever possible to the training. While being careful to avoid any well-known copywritten characters from cartoon or other sources, she suggested that you “create your own characters” and mentioned using “pictures of the executive staff, with their permission, in different poses that were applicable to the training.” She recalled her experience that seeing familiar faces in the training really helped learners to remember the issues being discussed.

4.       Measurable Learning

Hinson reminded listeners that “You also want to have measurable learning.” It’s important to make sure that you've established your objectives so that the learner knows what they're trying to learn. When putting together the learning content, make sure that a good percentage of the questions throughout your learning or at the end of the learning relate to those objectives.

5.       The Importance of a Passing Grade

Hinson emphasized the importance of “an established pass-fail policy,” and advised that “you do want to require all the students to pass.”  That way, in the unfortunate event that you have to attest to training, you can show “that learning actually occurred and everyone passed.”

More engaging compliance training is likely to hold the attention of employees and better inspire their commitment to protecting organization. That requires you to keep the training on the shorter side and as interesting as possible with such elements as interactive exercises and video. Efforts to keep compliance learners in mind can make a huge difference towards counteracting their resistance to training.  You want to be able to counteract the common question—what does this have to do with me? To do so, Newsholme offers, “You connect the dots for folks and help them understand that no matter their role in the organization, compliance is everybody's responsibility.”

Watch the full webinar here.