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Pivoting, redirecting, course correcting, shifting, transforming. Whatever word you want to use for what we’re doing right now, one thing is for sure—we are changing the way we do business. And while we may all have different words for it, there is one thing we have in common: We’re moving forward.

In the current situation--especially for those trying to reach senior living and long-term care operators who are right now experiencing extraordinary challenges—customer meetings, conferences, and trade shows have become, for the time being, no longer possible. But dedicated marketers are moving forward along a different path, namely that of virtual events.

Here are some key issues to keep in mind when making the shift to virtual events

• Virtual Events Require Hyper-Targeting Content
  When hosting a typical 1-day, in-person event in the long-term care or aging services space, you might have sessions and tracks that draw a variety of titles. You may have nurses attending clinical sessions while administrators are focused on attending sessions covering regulatory changes—all at the same live event. In the virtual online learning world, you need to be hyper-targeted in your content. Using the example above, you’d need to create separate webinars for nurses and separate webinars for administrators or be confident the webinar topic is salient for both audiences.
  
  
• Give Extra Attention to Webinar Titling and Description
  The last thing you want to do is have someone register for your webinar and then find it to be not applicable to their specific job needs. You not only risk losing them for that event, but for future ones as well. In the live event space, there is more personal interaction and networking that might lead an attendee to one session over another. You don’t have that luxury online so you need to be very specific and on point with your titling and descriptions.
  
  
• Holding Their Virtual Attention
  At a live event, you might offer an event-ending raffle in order to keep attendees engaged and present throughout. But how to you keep them engaged online until the end? You can consider a midway offer as well as an event-ending offer. The offer could be an online raffle, a value-added content offering, or even mid-webinar poll that can offer attendees some insight that they perceive as valuable.
  
  
• Increased Cost Effectiveness and Inclusivity
  The cost of attending live events can be prohibitive to some team members in the long-term care and aging services fields. Holding a virtual event makes it more accessible to some who may not otherwise be able to attend due to budget or time constraints. There’s no travel time, no lodging costs, and no meal allowances.
  
  
• The Advantage of Currency
  When someone prepares for a live event, the information they present is current as of that moment. However, with a virtual event, you have a better opportunity for up-to-the minute content through live polls, social media, live chat, etc.
  
  

So, in speaking of the power of virtual events, let’s focus on one of the most effective online events: The Webinar for CE Credit

One of the most effective and engaging virtual events you can add to your strategic toolkit is the webinar offering continuing education credits (CE). A carefully targeted and professionally developed virtual event can give you an increased flexibility in coverage as well as a greater ability to be very intentional about who you want to draw to your program. But there are important requirements to prepare for in creating and leveraging a CE program, typically:

• Abstract
• Goal statement
• Targeted audience
• State-specific accreditation rules
• Measurable objectives
• Tracking and verification of participation
• Delivery of post-event evaluations
• Certificate creation and delivery
• Back-end reporting

The bottom line is that offering CE credit most certainly makes your virtual event more attractive to your customer and more effective for you, but if you don’t have the staff, time, or expertise, it can be a steep hill to climb and your energies are probably better spent elsewhere.That’s where Quantum Age Collaborative comes in.We became CE experts so you don’t have to.You do what you do best and we’ll do what we do best—the heavy lifting of building a CE program.

I entered into the long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) field with the desire to improve my fellow human beings’ quality of life, and one thing I can say with assuredness is that this reason holds true for most of us. One of the many challenges we face in this era of health care is accomplishing this task while meeting the myriad requirements necessary to be paid for our services.

So what is the good news? Technology. Yes, that’s right, technology. Now I can hear a group of you moaning, or even possibly cursing me for using that dirty word. And for others it is what you’ve grown up with. But let’s face it—we are working in an amazing time of advancements and we have to put those advancements to good use for us and for our patients.

The appropriate use of technology is the only way to maximize our patients’ outcomes and our professional success. A critical factor in doing this is learning to use the newest tools and systems of our trade. These tools include, but are not limited to, mobile equipment, electronic health records, data analytics, remote monitoring, and the ever-growing arena of telehealth.

So how do busy patient care providers get the training they need to be more efficient and effective with these tools while still maintaining their high quality of care? Those holding the technology tools—the software and hardware companies in our industry—must provide our professionals blended learning opportunities to make the learning experience easily accessible, role-based, and work-schedule friendly.

We are in an age of immediate access via the internet, and our industry’s healthcare professionals need that same approach to training. In my opinion, training should follow what I refer to as DEAP:

• Divided into manageable chunks: How big is manageable? Think of it as a training break. Develop content that doesn’t take more than 15 minutes to complete.
• Easily accessible: Training for products and processes should be safely stored where they can be accessed via a secure internet connection. This allows for quick and easy access options that include smart phones, mobile tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. It also eliminates the need to find a manual or require access on a specific computer.
• Available anytime: Whenever possible, training should be stored so that staff can use secure logins to participate in training whenever the need arises.
• Process- and role-based training: A content library that is specific to each work role will save significant amounts of time for the professional using a software system, platform, and/or tools. This type of training collection keeps staff members from wasting precious time sifting through training that includes all functionalities available for each work role, rather than the specific process they need to complete.

For example: A patient leaves for the hospital at 11:30 pm with apparent stroke symptoms. This patient will need to be signed out from the facility. However, the nurse responsible for this task has not signed anyone out of the facility yet. Is a short process training video available for them to view when and where they need it? If there is only product-based or training documentation or videos that illustrate what each section/module of the EHR does then the nurse will have to review multiple items to ensure she has completed all tasks required, which may include such as clinical, billing, electronic medication administration record, or electronic treatment administration record. A short training video (10 minutes in length) that illustrates the transfer-to-hospital process will quickly show the exact steps needed to appropriately sign out the patient in a timely manner.

Yes, our industry is moving at a fast and ever-growing pace. And with it comes an increasing dependency on technology to meet patient care and business goals for success. We must be proactive in harnessing technology to our advantage and provide our professionals the training they need, when and how they need it so they can continue to offer high-quality care when and where they need to.

Making staff training content easily accessible and consumable is an important step in this direction.

Edie Deane, MS-CCC, CCM, develops customer- and staff-friendly processes of communication and role-specific training for Quantum Age Collaborative. Edie has worked for more than 30 years in LTPAC in sub-acute/brain injury rehabilitation; facility-based clinical and departmental management; as a national management trainer in the areas of financial management, departmental management, customer service and marketing; in the EHR software sector developing strategic customer and staff product training and communication; and as an owner of an online continuing education company, Care2Learn, for the allied health professionals working in the LTPAC industry.