This past summer, Elsevier launched the College of Personal Assistance and Caregiving (CPAC), a new web-based curriculum designed to train and educate learners working with people with physical disabilities and older adults. Pilot programs have already been launched in various states around the country, but a managed care program in Tennessee is also using CPAC to gather data.

The Volunteer State Health Plan Tennessee (VSHPTN), an affiliate of the Blue Cross/Blue Shield network, has not only begun to train their caregiving professionals with the CPAC curriculum, but are utilizing CPAC post-course surveys to gather data to help implement standardized training for managed care employees across the entire United States.

Seeking to provide a credentialed work force, VSHPTN is hoping to quantify the results of CPAC’s online learning in order to implement it in Blue Cross managed care programs across the country.

“Managed care organizations are seeking a high standard, world class education for direct care workers that is efficient and inexpensive,” said Tom Carpenter, Product Manager for DirectCourse. “This can only be achieved with this kind of online technology and skills demonstration.”

The CPAC curriculum was written to meet the standards and competencies for direct care workers. The people who are served are often on Medicaid and living in home and community based settings. A portion of their waivers are to be spent on training, and CPAC’s curriculum is the ideal method for managed care organizations to standardize their employees’ education.

A series of anonymous surveys at the end of each CPAC course helps the DirectCourse team quantify the results of the training, which in turn will help CPAC and the Blue Cross/Blue Shield network determine the training’s effectiveness.

Created by the Center for Personal Assistance Services at the University of California, San Francisco, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota’s Research and Training Center, this online curriculum utilizes the Elsevier Performance Manager, which allows supervisors and managers a variety of tools to measure and track effectiveness. CPAC is an effective tool to give employees a focused, self-directed career path, which helps to increase job satisfaction and reduce turnover.

For more information on the College of Personal Assistance and Caregiving, please visit:
http://directcourseonline.com/personalassistance/