Great Plains Regional Medical Center and partner HealthcareSource were recently named winners in the 2013 Brandon Hall Excellence Awards. The organizations earned a gold award for Best in Compliance Training in the Learning category, which recognizes learning programs specifically designed to address a compliance-driven learning objective.

Great Plains and HealthcareSource, a provider of talent management software for the healthcare industry, collaborated on a project to improve compliance rates and reduce training costs at the hospital. The project involved moving from a paper-based education and training system to online compliance courses.

“Our new software system saves us both time and money and helped us reach a 100 percent compliance rate with our training records,” said Jan Wright, training coordinator.

All United States hospitals are required to provide education to employees on certain topics. With Great Plains’ new compliance program, the hospital has been able to significantly reduce the education burden on staff, save time, and improve compliance with the required education.

“We have eliminated the manual piece of keeping track of employees’ training records. Now if an accrediting body visits and needs to see our training records, we can produce them at the click of a button,” Wright said.

Wright worked with outside agencies to determine the specific employee training required and how often it needs to be repeated. By doing this, Great Plains has reduced unnecessary, redundant training and has ensured that all required training is taking place each year.

Other companies joining Great Plains in receiving a Brandon Hall gold award this year include American Express, Nike, Dell, and Johnson and Johnson. The gold award is the highest honor available.

“We feel privileged to be in the company of such prestigious organizations honored with this same award,” said Greg Nielsen, CEO, Great Plains. “This achievement underscores our desire to deliver education in the most timely and effective manner possible.”

Brandon Hall Group is a research and analyst organization focused on developing learning, talent management, and business research to help drive organizational performance. The Brandon Hall Excellence Awards include 78 categories for functional areas that are responsible for driving performance within an organization. They recognize the best companies that have successfully developed and deployed programs, strategies, modalities, processes, systems, and tools that have helped companies achieve measurable results.