Industry
Nursing
Location
Georgia
Number of Licensees
170,000*
*approximation as of 2023
Overview
After statutory changes impacted the requirements for Georgia nurses to prove competency and renew their licenses, the Board needed a solution to enable their staff to successfully manage and verify compliance with the new requirements. After witnessing a neighboring state nursing board demonstrate success with CE Broker, the Board adopted CE Broker as their continuing education (CE) tracking and license renewal requirement management system.
Challenge
In 2013, the Georgia Nursing Act was amended to allow various options for nurses to meet maintenance of competency requirements for the license renewal process. Among these was the provision to submit CE hours as a precondition for renewal. Alternatively, nurses could demonstrate competency by logging specific work hours within the renewal period. However, these options confused nursing professionals and increased administrative tasks for the Board’s staff.
Nurses must now provide documentation of their CE and/or competency hours required to renew their license. The Board faced the daunting task of processing paper certificates for over one hundred thousand nurses and responding to surging customer service requests about the new regulations. The manual process of reviewing certificates contained inherent risks, heightening the potential for errors and straining their five-member staff.
The Board also had to address the critical challenge of supporting investigations into licensees with complaints filed against them. Each investigation necessitated a careful review of their CE to ensure they had met the standards set by the Board. “In addition to the process during license renewal cycles, if we receive a complaint about a nurse and the complaint is open, we automatically check the same process to see if they completed their continuing education during their last renewal period,” Dennis Rice, Compliance Specialist for the Georgia Board of Nursing explained. This process of reviewing multiple renewal cycles and documentation back in time can be a tedious process, examining older records that may not have been stored or submitted properly.
Solution
The Board searched for an efficient system to address these challenges for their staff and offer a better system for their licensees. CE Broker was brought to the Board’s attention by licensees in a neighboring state who successfully used the system to track and maintain their CE requirements. CE Broker accommodated the Board’s unique rules and regulations and help licensees more easily understand their license renewal requirements, ensuring a more smooth renewal process for both sides.
Results
The Board implemented CE Broker in 2015 and, with the new system, was able to transform their processes, enabling two Board staff members to verify competency for tens of thousands of licensees efficiently. CE Broker has allowed the Board to improve access to digital government services, providing nurses with a better customer service experience. The platform simplified access to centralized documentation, enabling the Board to audit its population of 170,000 nurses efficiently.
Natara Taylor, Executive Director of the Georgia Board of Nursing, said, “CE Broker has it all laid out for us. It’s an easy process, and without it, we’d need more staff to be able to audit.” Dennis Rice, Compliance Specialist for the Georgia Board of Nursing, shared, “Audits are the longest process we have to work through, regardless of the percentage of the population under each audit. Without CE Broker, we’d be lost.”
The digital system with CE Broker also supported the Board’s hybrid work environment. By eliminating the need to review faxed documents, the Board achieved a smoother and more flexible workflow, increasing the flexibility of being physically present in the office.
“Our data system could not store the volume of continuing education documents our office would receive. We would be overloaded with CE emails and faxes, which would add to our workload and require us to come to the office more often. With CE Broker, our licensees can upload and store their CE documents into their own account that they can view at any time and check the status of their CE requirements for that renewal period,” Taylor shared.
Taylor expressed excitement about CE Broker’s partnership with the Georgia Nursing Association (GNA), “it’s a great partnership because Board staff/members are not able to get out and about in the state and visit nurses in person. GNA can use their resources to visit hospitals and other healthcare facilities to give out information regarding the nurses’ continuing competency requirements and how to use CE Broker to meet this requirement, which is very helpful.”
GNA is the largest professional association for registered nurses in the state and often unites with key stakeholders to support the Board. Part of their mission is to provide nurses with essential resources, and their partnership with CE Broker contributes to that mission.
Natara Taylor
Executive Director of the Georgia Board of Nursing
About the Georgia Board of Nursing
Since 1907, the Georgia Board of Nursing (Board) has regulated licensed practical nurses, registered professional nurses, advanced practice registered nurses, licensed useful nursing education programs, and registered nursing education programs. The Board protects, promotes, and preserves public health, safety, and welfare through legislative regulation and control of practical nursing and registered professional education and practice.
About CE Broker by Propelus
Under the Propleus brand, CE Broker is a leading compliance and continuing education management solution. For over 20 years, Propelus solutions — CE Broker, EverCheck, and Immuware — have propelled the progress of millions of dedicated professionals in their career journey. Our market-leading workforce compliance management technology, full-lifecycle continuing education software, and vital data simplify total professional management for a happier workforce, better operations, and safer communities. We power professionals.
Learn more at cebroker.com and www.propelus.com