By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Elemental Management Group, LLC manages and operates eight long-term care facilities across the region, including Aaron Manor Rehabilitation ad Nursing Center in Fairport.
To address the longstanding healthcare worker shortage, Elemental, which is based in Oswego, developed and introduced its certified nursing assistant hybrid training program to train CNAs in only 75 hours, compared with some other programs that are up to 130 hours. The concentrated program has helped Elemental mint approximately 500 new CNAs in the past two years.
“The CNA program started as a way to more efficiently train people for our group,” said Joseph Murabito, president and managing member of Elemental Management.
Elemental’s CNA program has been approved by the state health departments of both New York and Pennsylvania. It plans to launch a Spanish version of the program. Murabito said that Elemental also plans to branch out to other areas of New York, including the Hudson Valley and Finger Lakes.
Elemental uses the program in-house and also offers a subscription model where Elemental teaches trainers from other companies to use the software for training their own staff. Once they subscribe, the organization can train as many people as they want.
Elemental can also provide trainers for another company’s CNA training.
“It’s much more cost effective than hiring on your own,” Murabito said. “It’s convenient for the RN involved. We want to work with every client to make it work.”
Many healthcare organizations struggle to pull RNs away from care providing to administer CNA training classes. Murabito views Elemental’s CNA program as a better use of RNs’ time, since they don’t have to supervise trainees the entire time.
“This is so much more efficient because the content and quizzes,” Murabito said. “You’d normally have to sit in a class to do this from 9-5 or in evenings. It may require people to leave their jobs. The mobile device content with the quizzes allows people to take it at their leisure. When they’re ready to competencies and skill testing, they go to a facility and have a trained person oversee it.”
One of the big impediments to healthcare training is that many people cannot attend in-person classes because they need to maintain their current employment. Taking most of the training online means that CNA trainees with Elemental’s program “don’t have to drive and leave their jobs,” Murabito said. “They can do it in a way that’s convenient for them.”
Trainees need reliable access to the internet, as the training is cloud-based.
Murabito hopes that the New York State Department of Health will allow additional healthcare roles to expand educational opportunities to similar online and hybrid models.
“New York has got to open their eyes to how exactly they can be more supportive of healthcare leaders who are trying to support and develop the profession whether regulatory impediments, training programs like this or even hiring a third party to train on their own property,” Murabito said. “There are situations where you can’t hire outside organizations to train on your own property.”
Anyone interested in the program should visit www.elementalmgt.com.