FMCNA enjoys a smooth transition to a customised, certification-friendly LMS, Totara Learn

Fresenius Medical Care North America (FMCNA) is the leading premier healthcare company focused on delivering high quality care to people with renal and other chronic conditions. FMCNA has a US network of more than 2,200 dialysis facilities, outpatient cardiac and vascular labs and urgent care centres.

The Challenge

FMCNA had identified a need to upgrade its LMS and website, which would be accessed by healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses and other practitioners, across North America. Their current LMS was in need of refurbishing; it looked dated and as it was using Flash, it was not iOS compatible and therefore didn’t reflect FMCNA’s position as an advanced organisation.

FMCNA needed a custom education portal that would encourage healthcare professionals to fit training into their busy schedules. Learners should be able to take a course for CE credit, read an article or find information quickly and easily; meaning the UI needed to be intuitive and learners should not need to be trained on how to use the LMS.  In addition, FMCNA needed sophisticated reporting capabilities and a flexible solution that would allow for new features and scalability.

The Solution

FMCNA partnered with MindQuest Learning to help them create a custom learning portal which would be more easily accessible, and in line with their brand.

MindQuest Learning introduced FMCNA to the LMS Totara Learn, and it was decided that this would be the most suitable platform for the learning portal. MindQuest Learning created a custom front-end design (CMS), with Totara Learn used as the engine. Learners interact with the CMS to get their training and administrators with the integrated backend LMS to track and report.  FMCNA provided content such as courses, articles and a glossary with which to populate the Learning Portal/LMS.

Totara Learn

FMCNA’s key requirements for their LMS were to have a better, more responsive design and better reporting than their previous LMS, and were delighted that Totara Learn could provide these benefits and so many more. They are currently making particular use of:

• custom user-friendly interface
• reporting – both standard and customisable reports
• certifications
• single sign-on capability
• custom profile fields
• custom certificates

The client also appreciated the fact that Totara Learn is open source, as they recognised the benefits of not being locked in and constrained by an LMS vendor. They also liked Totara Learn because it offers more customisable features than a proprietary LMS, and is a cost-effective solution for their organisation.

The Results

The LMS launched December 2015, so it is still early days for the platform. However, FMCNA has been delighted with the integrated custom learning portal platform so far, and have 22 courses uploaded to the LMS.

Working with MindQuest Learning has made integrating data from their old proprietary LMS into Totara Learn seamless. MindQuest Learning ensured that importing over 20,000 legacy user records with course completions and certificates into the new LMS with a different code language (and duplicate user information) was successful, making the switching process smooth for FMCNA.

“We needed a total system re-work and a custom solution that would adequately serve our purpose. Partnering with MindQuest Learning and Totara allowed us to achieve our end goals. MindQuest Learning was able to successfully develop and execute an appropriate solution for us. We are very pleased with the results and the timeframe in which the deliverables were presented. We highly recommend their services.”
– Dixie-Ann Sawin, PH.D., M.S., Director Medical Information, Fresenius Medical Care