TurningPoint and ResponseWare Case Study

Billings Clinic

BACKGROUND

The Billings Clinic, based in Billings, Montana, is the area's largest health care provider, serving Montana, northern and central Wyoming and western North Dakota. With over 230 physicians, 3500 employees and 6 branch clinics, Billings Clinic prides itself on providing health care, education and research to a region that greatly depends on its services.

Education is a key component of the mission at the integrated health care facility, with three areas of training to accommodate its numerous staff. Medical education serves physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners, also expanding into the fields of pharmacy and radiology. Professional development serves all nursing personnel, and the designated "Billings Clinic University" handles all non-clinical education and training such as safety and sensitivity classes.

THE CHALLENGE

Kristina McComas is the Medical Education Coordinator at Billings Clinic. During the past year, new requirements for measuring outcomes of continuing medical education (CME) programs have taken effect, creating a need to track and report conference results. After attending a Mayo Clinic conference that used audience response technology, McComas began to investigate the possibility of integrating such tools into their CME series.

Initially interested in renting a system, McComas determined that it would be just as cost-effective to purchase the response technology for multiple uses. When Turning Technologies' audience response software TurningPoint received a strong recommendation as the response technology of choice from some of Billings Clinic’s collaborating organizations, McComas didn't need to look much farther after speaking to the representatives at Turning Technologies.

"I was impressed at the responsiveness of our account executive," said McComas. "We never had to wait to get our questions answered. Customer service is very important and in some ways carries more weight than the high quality of the product. Luckily, there were a number of additional reasons why TurningPoint appealed to us."

THE SOLUTION

Billings Clinic adopted the TurningPoint audience response system due to its versatile features, including its compatibility with both PC and Mac. Many of the staff already knew how to use PowerPoint, so the learning curve was minimal. The first major implementation was at a CME conference with a total of 60 attendees. After McComas convinced a few speakers to insert the unfamiliar technology into their presentations, the system was welcomed by participants.

"We received very positive comments on evaluations. We even convinced one lecturer a half hour before the session to insert questions regarding a case study at the beginning and end of his presentation. It was pretty impressive to see the answers change. Participants felt it was incredibly interactive," said McComas.

At the end of a session, an attendee was not clear about one of the discussed concepts. Instead of sitting idly in the audience, the participant shared a case study of his own with the group. As the attendee explained his case, the presenter on stage inserted questions on-the-fly and polled the audience, providing a completely interactive experience.

Billings Clinic also has a very active telemedicine network, serving hundreds of patients in the surrounding rural areas who are far from specialty care, in some cases more than 350 miles. Currently 62 physician specialists at Billings Clinic provide specialty care to the region via telemedicine, serving 3000 patients each year. Just as the patients are far from specialty care, primary care providers in the region have trouble meeting their continuing education needs due to their remote locations. Turning Technologies' web-based polling solution ResponseWare has become a helpful part of the network, reaching those participants that can't physically attend local conferences but are able to participate via live telemedicine broadcast.

"While the main purpose of audience response was to benchmark CME outcomes, ResponseWare was a big part of the reason why TurningPoint was our preferred system. We have implemented web-based polling in weekly Grand Rounds where participants use smartphones and laptops to respond from remote locations. Attendees are able to contribute to the conversation and we get to track responses to see overall results," said McComas.

CONCLUSION

Billings Clinic has only had the system for a couple of months but is expanding its uses exponentially. The professional development department that handles the nursing education has implemented the system into CNA training. Billings Clinic University has begun to incorporate audience response polling into new employee orientation, and leadership has even expressed interest in using the technology for anonymous voting during meetings.

"The response has been great," said McComas. "Attendees are excited - it's fun. We love that it's through PowerPoint and you don't have to learn a new program. It's very user-friendly and no more complicated than plugging in a USB drive. We have just begun to use it and plan to explore the program more in-depth over time."

For more information about purchasing or renting Turning Technologies' audience response systems for your organization, contact us at 866-746-3015.