North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System: Winning a Competitive Advantage in Healthcare through Learning

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The North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System (NS-LIJ) is
the 16th largest healthcare network in the country and the largest healthcare network in New York State. NS-LIJ employs more than 37,000 peoples spread across hospitals and facilities on Long Island and serves the needs of millions of patients in and around Long Island, Queens and Staten Island.

NS-LIJ’s Center for Leadership & Innovation (CLI) was founded in 2002 in order to provide leadership training for managers and professional training for doctors and other operational staff.

CLI is a direct and forward-thinking investment in NS-LIJ’s human capital—the managers, doctors and staff whose improved knowledge helps NS-LIJ improve patient experiences, increase service efficiencies and grow the business.

“The landscape of healthcare is increasingly patient-driven,” explains Alan Cooper, VP of Learning and Innovation for NS-LIJ. “Our learning program seeks increased patient satisfaction as its main outcome.” Cooper adds that eCornell’s model of e-learning plays a vital role in CLI’s mission. eCornell’s breadth of learning materials, coupled with a unique approach to learning design and instruction, serves all levels of CLI needs, from core management development to operational support.

Senior Managers & Future Leaders
eCornell offers a number of online learning programs to the NS-LIJ community. eCornell begins at the top by offering managers certificate programs in Executive Leadership, but also offer an array of programs addressing customer service, core HR topics (such as retirement benefits and equal opportunity law), organizational culture, work/life balance and communications.

eCornell is deeply integrated into CLI’s mission of training both senior managers and future leaders. eCornell programs are a cornerstone of CLI’s Core Management Development Program, as well as its High Potential Development Program of 125 candidates (who are all coached by eCornell certificate holders at NS-LIJ). To date, over 100 NS-LIJ senior managers and future leaders have completed an eCornell Certificate Program, which can range anywhere from 4 to 12 courses.

In all, NS-LIJ employees have taken hundreds of eCornell courses and have posted a remarkable 91.4% completion rate. NS-LIJ learners have also given the entire eCornell experience outstanding reviews (scale 1-5):

• Overall rating of content: 4.21
• Overall rating of the online learning experience: 4.22
• Overall rating of the instructor: 4.28
• Overall rating of the course as a whole: 4.23

The eCornell experience has also proven to be highly relevant to learners’ jobs:

• The material presented in this course is applicable to my current or desired job: 4.25
• The skills and knowledge presented in this course transfer directly to my workplace responsibilities: 4.21.

“The fact that our users are so pleased with eCornell ties into the central goal of our learning project,” explains Cooper. “Employees satisfied with their training will apply it directly to their working environments, and the ultimate beneficiary is the patient.”

The eCornell Solution
CLI learners who sign up for an eCornell class encounter a blended model of courseware, online interactivity and collaboration, and traditional instruction.

eCornell’s courseware is Web-based and asynchronous, meaning learners can access it anywhere, and at their own pace. The courseware consists of several online modules, including case studies, illustrations, simulations and tests that combine to teach and reinforce material from every pedagogical angle.

Interactivity is a cornerstone of the eCornell learning experience. From course enrollment to completion, learners are involved in discussion forums and email exchanges that establish ties between themselves, their fellow students, and their instructors. Learners enter a class not only with peers from their own company, but also with learners from other companies, countries and cultures—creating opportunities for interaction with, and exposure to, a broader range of professional perspectives.

“I enjoy the fact that the class has such a diverse makeup of professionals representing such a wide variety of companies,” noted one NS-LIJ student. “It really enhances the exchange of ideas.”

While learners advance through eCornell modules at their own pace, the overall experience is created and guided by Cornell University professors, who facilitate the exchange of ideas. The quality of instruction available through eCornell is unparalleled, and distinguishes eCornell from providers of traditional elearning courseware.

Consider Professor Samuel Bacharach, author of Get Them on Your Side, the business book on which the eCornell course Studies in Proactive Leadership is based. Bacharach, who has been teaching at Cornell for more than 35 years, spent three years deciding how best to translate his work in the classroom and in the business press to the online environment of eCornell. Studies in Proactive Leadership is the result—a culmination of a lifetime of managerial scholarship, experience and training once available only to students of Cornell University’s Ithaca, NY campus.

Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR), the academic home of Bacharach, is the highest-ranked institution of its kind in the world. eCornell also serves as an online home to material taught at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management (JGSM), a top-tier business school, and the School of Hotel Administration, which like ILR, is considered the foremost institution of its kind in the world. Professors from these institutions have centuries of cumulative experience in researching, teaching and applying business concepts to the workplace, and it is the benefit of this experience that CLI learners reap when they attend eCornell classes.

Gaining Competitive Advantage
Hospitals have historically been wary of being too “business-like” in their thinking. However, as NS-LIJ came to discover, healthcare organizations must consider themselves as best practice-driven businesses in order to improve patient outcomes, reduce costs and increase their competitiveness. Indeed, with more than 600,000 healthcare establishments in the United States, no hospital can afford to neglect its competitiveness in the marketplace.

In 2002, NS-LIJ adopted a Six Sigma management philosophy as its mission. In NS-LIJ’s case, Six Sigma is all about continuous process improvement as a means of reducing errors in service provisioning and delivery. In a service-oriented business such as healthcare, good training is what makes Six Sigma possible. Additionally, good training is highly correlated with improved employee satisfaction, which in turn flows down to higher employee retention rates and patient satisfaction. eCornell’s support of NS-LIJ’s mission is therefore at the heart of the hospital’s mission statement and is playing a transformative part in the healthcare efficiency revolution.