Cancer treatment provider Procure prescribed an accelerated training strategy to treat the challenges of rolling out complex new proton therapy centers.
by Site Staff
January 24, 2010
Proton therapy, an advanced form of radiation treatment, provides hope and positive outcomes for many patients with cancer. Demand has been growing for this therapy as patients learn about its benefits and health care providers, including physicians and hospitals, realize the potential for bringing proton therapy to more patients.
However, few proton centers have been completed due to the complexity of their design, construction and staff training. Some institutions attempting to install proton centers have been stalled in the planning stages for more than a decade by the enormity of the project.
ProCure Treatment Centers Inc., based in Bloomington, Ind., was created to cut through the complexity of developing proton therapy centers. In the four years since its founding, ProCure has a proton center open and treating patients, a second center under construction and three more in development. ProCure also consults with other centers on everything from technology to staffing.
The company was founded in 2005 by John Cameron to increase access to proton therapy and bring it to patients by aligning with radiation oncology practices and hospitals or health systems to build centers. ProCure collaborates with radiation oncology practices and hospitals and provides management leadership and guidance in design, construction, financing, staffing, training and day-to-day operations of proton therapy centers.
A key to developing centers is being able to staff them. With so few centers in operation — only six in the United States — medical professionals and administrative staff with experience in proton therapy are in short supply.
To address this problem, ProCure created the Training and Development Center (TDC) to provide specialized training for proton therapy. Located in Bloomington, the TDC provides before-the-job training in proton therapy treatment, including treatment rooms equipped to simulate the treatment environment.
By providing staff with training as the construction of a center is being completed, ProCure’s centers are able to treat patients the day the doors open.
Accelerating Training to Accommodate Growth
From the outset, a training center was part of ProCure’s overall plan. The challenge was to provide comprehensive, intensive training in a cost-effective manner with an emphasis on quality, safety and patient care.
After a center is built, the medical, technical and administrative staffs need to be trained on the job, typically using the actual facility and its equipment, which delays the center’s ability to treat patients.
“We needed to accelerate the pace of moving a new employee from the front door to the floor,” said Tom Doyle, vice president of training and development for ProCure.
As ProCure designed its training program, the company put a priority on keeping classes small and building specific competencies through role-based curricula that take into consideration the employee’s prior experience. The company wanted to avoid the cost of growing its training programs, which average an instructor-student ratio of 3 students to 1 instructor. As many employees would be coming from outside the area for their training, ProCure also wanted a program that reduced travel expenses and time away from home.
“We wanted to reduce instructor-led training hours and effectively manage the crucial areas where instructor-led training is the best approach,” Doyle said. “We also needed to seamlessly integrate new course content developed by six content vendors.”
Equally important was the need for quality and regulatory compliance. As a health care facility, ProCure must comply with a number of standards, including the privacy standards enforced by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). ProCure must also continually comply with Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations standards to remain accredited. Training is required of all ProCure staff, from the medical professionals who need the technical knowledge to treat patients to the administrative staff who need to be skilled in operational issues.
Proton Platform
ProCure sought an online learning platform for training courses and e-learning content that could be easily and quickly deployed and could also be scaled up to keep pace with the company’s expected growth. Preferring to promote from within, the company also wanted a talent development solution for succession planning that could track individual employee development and certification.
Company leaders also recognized that with the right strategy and platform in place, training could be also offered to other centers seeking advanced certification programs in proton therapy treatment for their staffs. The company sought a platform that could share learning content with external partners using the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) framework that enables sharing of learning objects among different management systems. In addition, the company needed a solution that deployed SSL encryption, essential for offering training to external audiences and working with the general public or open enrollment.
ProCure selected SumTotal ResultsOnDemand-Learning for its functionality and configuration for administering a variety of learning activities. The solution implements single sign-on to connect to training resources, and Web-based activities are available for employees on their first day of employment without having to travel.
ProCure chose a software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model for its learning platform so that the company could avoid the upfront investment and risks of building and securing an on-premises IT infrastructure.
ProCure emphasized the high priority of ensuring scalability in its LMS.
“We know that the platform will take care of us today, but more importantly, we know that with SCORM support, SSL encryption and multiple landing pages, it will serve us well in the future,” Doyle said.
ProCure saw essential benefit from utilizing the capability to make training available for external audiences. In doing so, the company is reducing the cost of training and the time it takes to train staff.
Cameron noted that it has taken ProCure four years to get to this point. But, as the first patients in Oklahoma were treated in August 2009, the preparation of the center staff was in evidence. According to the company, it became the first proton therapy center to treat two patients on its first day in operation, both in less than 40 minutes.
ProCure attributes these unprecedented treatment times directly to preparation and training.
Learning Lifesavers
ProCure is using the learning management system to reduce the cost of training and the time it takes to train employees, realizing a significant savings each year.
“The automated system and e-learning play a crucial role in tracking individual employee progress and reducing the amount of travel expense, the length of stay at the training center and the per-person cost at each center. Web-based activities are immediately available for employees without having to wait or travel,” Doyle said. This facilitated staff-wide buy-in on a wide range of training modules. “We had 100 percent user adoption in the first four weeks with more than 150 learning activities.”
ProCure benefits from e-learning in several ways. Employees are trained sooner, and managers can engage them more rapidly in learning activities and track their progress for talent development and certification. Administrators can now work with multiple content providers and seamlessly integrate content into the system. The company also monitors compliance by using the system’s tracking, auditing and reporting capabilities.
Time and motion studies enable ProCure to examine training impact at the task level. All employees wear radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to record movement in treatment areas and how much time each part of the treatment process takes. The company can then measure the actual treatment time against the original design objectives. Training modules are tweaked each time performance improves.
ProCure also has the ability to quickly convert its learning management system and curriculum for new business opportunities.
“The platform enables us to make this shift in content sharing and generate revenue from new sources,” Doyle said. “It lets us offer different landing pages, each with its own unique look, for our partners.”
Most important, to meet its projected growth, ProCure has established a corporate education strategy that replaces the more costly instructor-led training with e-learning, but also helps to make proton therapy education more widely accessible. Accelerating the process of building these centers will help provide exceptional patient care and make a significant impact on people’s lives.