The Missouri-based health system had no easy way to offer training to nurses and physicians whose shifts occurred outside normal business hours. And, workers cited increased opportunities for education as something that, in part, would motivate them to keep working for SSMHC.

SSMHC also had to meet the needs of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). To do this, the St. Louis-headquartered health system had to track and report on not only those employees taking courses but, in many instances, their competency level.

SSMHC chose SumTotal to meet federally mandated reporting requirements and cut the cost of training.

SSMHC is now able to effectively track who has completed courses and their level of proficiency to comply with the OSHA, JCAHO, and HIPAA regulations. Twelve months after installing their new LMS, SSMHC cited an 80 percent increase in the number of employees using online learning. Within the next few months, the hours spent training employees dropped by 18 percent from the nearly one million hours spent training employees prior to the launch of the LMS. Margaret Schulte, Education Manager at the SSM Information Center, adds, "When we achieve a 25 percent time reduction across more than 21,000 staff members, we expect to save nearly $5.5 million in terms of productivity."

Employee satisfaction rates are also on the rise. Prior to the LMS, satisfaction with technical training (measured on a five-point scale) at SSMHC averaged 4.46. The following year, that number rose to 4.56. Scores relating to effectiveness of the courses average 3.3 on a four-point scale.

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