SimplePractice, an EHR and practice management software company, has launched a subscription service for group practice owners to invest in clinicians’ continuing education.
With Learning Pass, group practice owners and their clinicians can subscribe for full, unlimited access to the SimplePractice Learning catalog. That offers access to more than 150 hours of on-demand CE courses and live webinars. The library includes introductory to advanced courses and access to specific course collections like law and ethics, HIPAA and more.
CE tends to be “a check-the-box, regulatory-type item,” SimplePractice President Jonathan Seltzer told Fierce Healthcare. Courses are typically paper-based and expensive. Launched three years ago, SimplePractice Learning was intended as the antidote to that, aimed at individual clinicians.
But the company, which now serves more than 169,000 practitioners, heard feedback and saw demand for a broader offering, according to Seltzer. So it was re-platformed to be more dynamic for groups. “They get a sort of all-they-can-eat, access to everything,” Seltzer said.
Group practices that subscribe can offer their clinicians CE as an employee benefit and manage their group CE learning and training. With everyone completing the same courses across the board, the option has the potential to offer group practices more consistency with CE, Seltzer said. Administrators can see what courses have been completed and can curate the library depending on the practice focus.
Beyond group practice owners, SimplePractice has also seen interest from payers, so it plans to offer Learning Pass to non-SimplePractice customers. Payers want to offer the subscription to their in-network providers as a benefit.
SimplePractice CE courses are taught by experts in mental healthcare, specific treatment modalities, entrepreneurship, finance and career development. These experts are often practicing clinicians and colleagues in the community, “which makes the content really engaging and relevant,” Seltzer noted.
Learning Pass won’t solve workforce shortages overnight, Seltzer said, but it can help reduce clinician burnout, which can be compounded by CE that isn’t engaging, hard to find or expensive. The goal of Learning Pass is to leave clinicians more energized and thus more likely to remain in the industry, he said.