ASHHRA Girds HR for Larger Role in Hospital Operations

Even before President Obama's healthcare reforms came into play, we were seeing the role of human resources growing (or expanding) within hospital operations. The view that HR is an orphan at board and senior management meetings has been mostly – but not completely -- rendered obsolete because senior managers have come to understand the usefulness and savings associated with effective recruiting and retention in an era of chronic workforce shortages.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act adds to HR's stature because of the provision that factors patient satisfaction into Medicare reimbursements. And most anyone with any experience in hospital management will tell you that patient satisfaction is impossible without employee engagement, and effective employee engagement is difficult without strong HR leadership.

For HR leaders who want to play a strategic role in hospital planning, a mere knowledge of their own areas of expertise is no longer sufficient, says Stephanie Drake, executive director of the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration. With that in mind, ASHHRA has created the eLearning Network, a series of Web-based professional development courses built around five competencies. These courses will not only provide training in traditional HR areas like "people strategies" and "personnel leadership," but will also offer a broader perspective of hospital operations with a course on healthcare business knowledge.

"Many HR departments are simply handed a budget and told to stay between these guidelines. Now they are becoming more of a business partner with hospital operations," Drake says. "We are trying to facilitate their knowledge around what they should be communicating to their CEOs. Some HR professionals may not have a business background, but they need to speak appropriately at the board table, understand their audience, because many of them are asked to be more involved with the budget."

Drake says the eLearning Network, launched Feb. 14, had been under consideration for about five years as an alternative to more rigidly scheduled and expensive Webinars or conferences. "Since about 2008 when the economy took a nose dive we saw that many of our members still needed education and still needed an avenue to be on top of best practices," Drake says. "They had less time with a variety of communication vehicles. We decided to start eLearning purely because our members were looking for it. It allows them to learn at their own pace and their own time frame."

Depending on the class, eLearning costs ASHHRA members anywhere from nothing (for the course that examines the impact of healthcare reform) to $199 to complete one of the five competencies. Each of the seven to nine courses within a competency takes about 20 minutes to 40 minutes to complete. "If you took every lunch hour per day I would think you could easily get through it in a year," Drake says. "But we are always adding new courses. There might be something like managing disruptive behaviors because it's become an issue in your facility. It's up to the learner. It's truly what they look for and what they would want."

Drake says eLearning will always be a work in progress, adapting to whatever training members need. "It will change as our members' needs change. As health reform guides the way we do business. That will change," she says. "There will always be a class in there about on-boarding, for example, and we won't necessarily change the basics for on-boarding, but there may be some best practices that we want to add to the class. We will always need to update the classes."

ASHHRA is on to something here. In this era of tighter budgets, HR administrators still need professional development – perhaps even more so. This series of courses seems to be a practical and affordable way to address that need. If you've taken these courses, let me know what you think.