What happened when Quality Insights embraced a PLMS designed for real care

The gap: A system that couldn’t do what was needed

Having been in business for over 50 years, and with a mission to improve health and healthcare, Quality Insights understands quality education is the foundation for better healthcare outcomes.

Their remit spans doctor’s offices, nurses, hospices, home health providers, and more through a broad customer base that includes government and private sector customers. Their work as a non-profit organization targets local, regional, and national audiences.

The complexity of their training meant they were relying on multiple systems to manage continuing education (CE) credits for various disciplines, learning data, and training content for thousands of healthcare providers. Their LMS at the time lacked flexibility and centricity, forcing the team to stitch together cumbersome workarounds with additional technology, like using SurveyMonkey to manage clinical post-training evaluations and knowledge checks.

Their previous LMS’ functionality was also shockingly un-user friendly. For example, RN Project Coordinator Misty Kevech couldn’t use one email to access multiple tenancies (or Enterprises, as their previous LMS vendor calls them). She and other users had to juggle multiple logins for every tenancy.

Plus, reporting was so difficult, especially when they could not format fields to require specific types of responses, like numeric values.   

And for the cherry on top, one of their national programs wasn’t necessarily meant to fit a traditional LMS, so: “We were putting a square peg in a round hole, but we needed to make it work,” said Misty.

“There was no interest in figuring out a solution,” Learning Architect Kerry Copeland added. “We were constantly making sacrifices and tough choices just to make things work.”

The solution: A vendor that strived to understand

After more than four years with their prior LMS, Kerry and Misty were struggling to find another solution that met 100% of Quality Insights’ learning and performance needs.

One of their major must-haves? Maintaining accurate and up-to-date certificates across different disciplines with different credit requirements so learners have real-time evidence of their achievements. Their prior LMS only allowed them to upload one certificate at a time. When CE details changed, they had to upload a new certificate, which caused inconsistencies.

One of their national programs serves more than 6,000 dialysis facilities across the United States, collecting key data to improve patient outcomes. After completing a certain number of modules, the program provides facilities with a “diamond status” to recognize excellence in patient safety. Given that dialysis patients are highly vulnerable to infections and other risks, it’s critical that Quality Insights provides an easy, reliable way for facilities and learners to track, maintain, and prove their CE credits.

Acorn expanded our certification functionality to support the way healthcare professionals track CEs. Quality Insights can now automate the generation and update of certificates, so users have a single master certificate that always reflects their latest CE hours. We also eliminated the pesky need for multiple aliases, allowing users to log in to for tenancies with a single email.

“We did not have the flexibility Acorn is providing and creating for us to do those special projects,” said Misty.

So, despite not quite hitting all of Quality Insights’ must-have requirements, what made Acorn stand out was our desire to understand exactly how their learning ecosystem worked and how we could support that.

The impact: A partner that cares

Quality Insights’ first post-implementation launch saw 60 people enrolled in training, and a single administrator able to handle all support requests, no technical assistance required.

Misty and Kerry anticipate that Acorn’s advanced reporting will give them more meaningful, actionable data (without the monthly anxiety). The long-term goal is to centralize all learning and performance data in Acorn, eliminating the additional tech and manual workarounds and ensuring a consistent user experience for all.

Beyond the tech, they have dedicated support invested in their success. Kerry describes Technical Account Manager Jenny Tran as “a godsend” who explains everything in a way that makes sense to them. In comparison to their previous experience with support, Misty simply said: “What customer service?”

Meeting their initial point of contact, Sales Director Cody Thistle, in person at TICE reinforced Acorn’s care. “Jenny and Cody really make themselves available to us. They take the time to understand our problems and work on creative solutions with their development team.”

Having a system that cares that every healthcare provider has the right knowledge to deliver the best possible care has made a massive difference. “It was huge that someone was willing to listen to our problems.”