Choosing the Right LMS for Healthcare Training

Choosing the right LMS for healthcare training is ​​increasingly vital as the industry experiences rapid growth. Fueled by an onslaught of new technologies, strategies and products, the healthcare education sector is expected to reach $280.6 billion by 2032. Healthcare training requirements are as diverse as the services provided, so it is crucial to identify an LMS that accommodates these expanding training needs.

For example, non-profits and small teams often lack the resources for complex setups, making ease of LMS onboarding and management a priority. Some healthcare organizations require the ability to deliver or sell courses to training groups spread across geographic locations, such as doctor or dentist offices. This typically involves managing various user groups and access levels.

Additionally, companies selling medical devices or health products must educate hospital staff, physical therapists, and other users about their products. This training can be provided as a value-add or standalone service for sale. And lastly, workplace training like mental health awareness and health & safety training must be accessible, easy to track, and tailored to ensure all staff stay compliant.

Above all, scalability is key. Getting the right courses to the right people, at the right time, without adding extra work. An LMS for healthcare training needs to be adaptable, flexible and easy to use. In this article, we’ll explore key LMS features that help healthcare training providers scale, ensure compliance, and streamline training delivery.

Continuing Education, Certification & Learning Paths

Continuing Education

Nurses, dentists and other healthcare practitioners are often required to earn continuing education credits in specialized topics. These credits support professional growth while ensuring professionals stay updated on the latest practices and meet regulatory and licensing requirements in their fields. An LMS for healthcare training should be flexible, offering multiple credit types and values for different courses as needed. Ensure CE credit reports are available so LMS admins can keep tabs on the success of continuing education programs for each user, course or client.

Certification

As in many compliance and regulatory training fields, custom completion certificates should be easily accessible for both learners and managers in healthcare. LMS completion certificates can be equipped with verification abilities such as a QR code that can be scanned by employees, regulators or auditors to instantly verify that a practitioner has completed required courses and is compliant with state or provincial regulations. Common certificate customization options include: Multiple templates, the option to tailor them with different legal requirements or validity periods and easily apply them to courses.

Learning Paths for Compliance Training

There are many definitions of a ‘Learning Path’, depending on who you ask and the platform they use. Some training providers refer to their functionality as “drip” content. Typically, Learning Paths are an LMS functionality used in compliance training that can require learners to take courses in a certain order over a certain period. Learning Paths ensure structured training by automating course sequences and deadlines, helping learners stay compliant

Learners can be in multiple Learning Paths simultaneously and courses are assigned automatically, saving admin time and ensuring learners stay compliant. They use automated emails, so learners stay on track and managers are updated on progress. They’ll often come equipped with reports or dashboards for easy insight into compliance rates for courses, paths or user groups.

Healthcare Training Delivery Via eCommerce

Delivering online training via eCommerce is a budding strategy used by training providers in multiple industries to make their courses more accessible to potential customers. Let’s look at three scenarios in the healthcare industry.

Upskilling for Medical and Dental Practitioners

A good example is dental offices that purchase training courses for upskilling or for training employees on new products or techniques. An LMS eCommerce integration benefits these businesses by providing instant course access with minimal administration time and effort. For example, an office manager can visit a training provider’s website, purchase multiple seats for a course, and invite their employees to take the course. This process is fully hands-off for the training provider and they get access to customer-specific reporting in the LMS to track completion rates.

Selling Training Alongside Medical Devices or Wellness Products

In some cases, training is not necessarily the primary product, but rather a value-add for companies selling devices or other products. For example, a company specializing in physiotherapy products can sell training videos alongside those products to educate customers on how to use them effectively. Similarly, wellness product producers who sell items like skin care creams to spas and dermatologists can provide training to end users on how to properly use and sell those products. Regardless of the industry, customers can buy tangible products and online training with a single checkout, maximizing order value, increasing efficiency and improving customer satisfaction. Email marketing apps in your eCommerce platform can also be leveraged to build rapport with customers by sending them new release information, discounts and articles.

Medical Tools, Equipment and Software for Hospitals and Doctors’ Offices

We’ve established that an LMS for healthcare training, in tandem with eCommerce integration, makes it easy to list training for purchase or alongside other tools and products. But keep in mind that just because you're delivering courses through eCommerce doesn't mean you have to charge high prices (or anything at all!). Using an eCommerce platform like Shopify means you can create custom discounts for certain customers or private, customer-specific landing pages with unique pricing. Let’s say you sell medical software, but the software is tailored for each customer and has corresponding custom pricing. You can hide these training products from your main site and use apps and/or gated landing pages to allow certain customers to buy their training.

Selling Compliance Training Courses Online

While many large companies offer internal training to their employees to stay compliant with industry or government regulations, there is a market for individuals and businesses to purchase compliance training from specialist providers via eCommerce. For example, organizations that collect personally identifying information, such as doctors’ offices, dental offices, and health clinics might purchase privacy awareness training to keep employees compliant on current standards. Similarly, businesses in hazardous industries, like construction and waste management, rely on specialist training providers to ensure their employees meet OSHA and HAZWOPER compliance standards. Quickly and easily enrolling multiple employees in these courses through eCommerce purchases streamlines compliance training while reducing administrative overhead.

Delivering Healthcare Training to Multiple Audiences

Now, let’s look at different ways healthcare training providers can tailor and deliver content to varied organizations, roles and groups.

Organizing Users in Groups

Most LMS have different ways of grouping users, such as by job title, department or location. This functionality is useful for user organization, reporting and course delivery.

Consider a company that sells MRI machines to hospitals. Radiologic Technologists need training on how to use the MRI machine, while Engineers need training on maintaining and repairing the MRI machine. An LMS for healthcare training should allow you to group users to easily assign the right courses to the right roles for the right customers. For example, our fictitious MRI company could group its users by customer (hospital) name and job title. An admin could then create an assignment that delivers a course to all users in ‘Hospital A’ with the job title of ‘Engineer.’ Each hospital group could have a dedicated administrator to manage users and report on training.

Branded Training Portals

Multi-tenant LMS functionality enables organizations to provide separate branded training portals for different clients or client types. At Firmwater, we refer to these as “Client Sites.” Here’s what this could look like for training providers in healthcare:

Hospitals & Healthcare Providers: Each hospital could have its own LMS portal with custom content, admin roles, groups and reporting.

Corporate Training (Mental Health, Workplace Safety, etc.): Each client has a distinct, branded portal so can access custom courses while maintaining separate user management.

Internal vs. External Training

Branded training client sites can also organize users based on whether they are internal employees or users from partners or customers. An internal training platform could be branded to your business and contain courses for compliance, onboarding, or role-based skill development. Within the same multi-tenant hierarchy, you could create separate sites for partners or customers. This could be a single site for all partners/customers where users are grouped by company name, or each could have their own site, depending on the size and complexity of your healthcare training.

Geographic & Regulatory Customization

Healthcare training providers that deliver courses internationally or across states/provinces often need the ability to customize content to meet regulatory requirements. A good example of this is privacy awareness laws in healthcare, which may differ between the United States and Canada. In this scenario, you could create a client site for USA users and another for Canadian users. Each site can have custom content and specific reporting. You could also consider managing geographic regions by group functionality within a single site, and have admin and reporting capabilities for each region.

Regardless of how groups and multi-tenancy strategies are leveraged, healthcare training providers can scale training across different audiences while maintaining customization, compliance, and reporting accuracy.

Data and Privacy in Healthcare Training

Healthcare training providers must comply with different regulations depending on their location, such as HIPAA (U.S.), GDPR (EU/UK), and PIPEDA (Canada). These laws govern how personal and medical data is stored, processed, and shared, requiring an LMS to have strong data protection measures in place. Here are a few data and privacy factors to consider in an LMS for healthcare training:

Data Encryption: All data transmitted between users and an LMS should be encrypted using HTTPS, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of information during transfer.

Access Controls: The LMS should support role-based access controls, allowing administrators to define permissions and restrict access to sensitive information based on user roles.

Security Logging: An LMS should maintain detailed security logs that record user activities, including logins and data access events. These logs enable administrators to monitor system usage and detect unauthorized access attempts.

Data Retention & Deletion Policies: Many regulations require training providers to store records for a set period and mandate proper data deletion once that period expires. An LMS should support retention policies, including permanent data deletion upon request, to meet compliance requirements.

Key Takeaways for Healthcare Training Providers

An LMS for healthcare training should be flexible, scalable, and equipped with features like eCommerce integration and/or multi-tenancy to manage diverse audiences efficiently. The right platform simplifies compliance and training delivery while reducing administrative effort. With the right LMS, healthcare training providers can streamline operations and focus on delivering high-quality education.

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