Educational products take spotlight at ASHE

The Adam Bazer File

CV

• Current senior director of knowledge product development at the American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE) in Chicago.
• Director of education at ASHE.
• Senior technical manager for health information technology standards at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in Chicago.
• Senior manager for chapter relations at HIMSS.
• Senior manager for user experience at HIMSS.
• IHE USA liaison at IHE USA in Chicago.
• Curriculum designer for multimedia at After School Matters in Chicago.
• Market research associate at HIMSS.

Education

• Master’s of engineering in product design and development management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
• Bachelor’s degree in video production at Columbia College Chicago.

As the executive overseeing the American Society for Health Care Engineering’s (ASHE’s) education offerings, Adam Bazer, MPD, senior director of knowledge product development, has helped introduce a wealth of new programs, products and events. In this interview, he talks about some of them.

What have been some major accomplishments of the ASHE knowledge product team over the past few years?

I am going to shamelessly take this as an opportunity to first shout out the amazing ASHE product team: April Damon, Chris Dimick, Corrie Fisher, Melissa Binotti Heim, Landon Hegedus, Senada Hidic, Wes Peart, Maria Tejeda and Melanie Vanduan are the people who day in and day out work to design, develop and deliver ASHE’s incredible products.

From a new product standpoint, the accomplishment that the product team is the proudest of over the past few years is the launch of the ASHE Core Competency Framework™ (ashe.org/core). This framework had a decade-long gestation process within the wider ASHE staff and community. It was very special for all of us on the product team to help bring that framework out to the public and to help integrate it into ASHE’s website as a collation tool for ASHE’s deep body of knowledge.

How are ASHE’s educational programs related to the Core Competency Framework?

Health care facilities managers must have a combination of skills, knowledge and ability to effectively lead a multi-disciplinary team that can identify, prioritize and resolve an ever-adapting list of issues. The Core Competency Framework charts out key skills of health care facilities management and offers education, resources and tools to help professionals fill knowledge gaps in each area.

ASHE’s product team designs all our publications and education to align with one or more of the core competencies to ensure the ASHE community and field at large can leverage those resources to improve their understanding of best practices associated with the core competencies.

What are some innovations being introduced for the International Summit Exhibition on Health Facility Planning, Design & Construction™ and Health Care Facilities Innovation Conference®?

ASHE focuses on a cycle of continuous improvement when it comes to our national conferences. There are three main areas where we are focusing our improvement efforts.

First, we are trying to create more opportunities for peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. There is a lot of good education that attendees gain from speakers in a lecture-based format, but it is just as powerful to hear about solutions from colleagues at facilities similar to yours in different regions of the country.

Second, we are working to improve business-to-business connections. Solutions providers have lots of different metrics for judging the return on investment of conference participation, and we are working to ensure they have increased opportunities to interact with fellow solutions providers in an environment where they can focus on those connections without impacting their interactions with conference attendees from provider organizations.

Finally, we are continuing to layer more evidence-based research delivery to conference attendees. ASHE is proud of its partnership with The Center for Health Design and participation in The Center’s Knowledge Repository. We continue to work with The Center to explore how to connect conference attendees with information from the repository that may be of interest or use to them.

How are learning and development budgets for facilities and planning, design and construction professionals impacting ASHE’s efforts?

We have to consider the learning and development of health care facilities professionals in relationship with overall funding challenges for hospitals and health systems.

The need to stay current or even ahead of the field as it relates to job skills is vitally important to an organization’s ability to support the delivery of safe health care. It is especially helpful for facilities professionals to frame the work that they do as vital to the clinical experience.

That doesn’t discount the financial challenges hospital and health care systems face. For professionals who are seeking career development through training and education, it is important to speak in the language that appeals most to those funders and communicate the value that improving your knowledge base will generate for the organization.

ASHE provides support for these efforts, such as our conference attendance justification toolkits. I am always happy to help ASHE community members craft messages that communicate the value of ASHE education for those individuals and their organizations. Those who may need help can reach me at abazer@aha.org.

What are some new educational initiatives or knowledge products being introduced by ASHE?

Currently, the ASHE product team’s highest priority is our years-long launch of The Health Care Facilities Management Essentials Series (ashe.org/hcfmseries). This trailblazing series offers the first consistent, authoritative resource on health care facilities management to ensure that professionals can easily obtain essential baseline information to do their jobs effectively.

The series is made up of handbooks and educational programs. The handbooks act as a repository of best practices and information professionals can continually reference. They are perfect orientations for early careerists’ first years on the job and reliable resources for those beyond. The education programs are great for operationalizing that body of knowledge and are perfect practice for implementing key concepts.

What are some volunteer opportunities, and why are they important in the product sphere?

ASHE products could not be developed without the expertise of the ASHE member community. There are a few main volunteer opportunities ASHE members can consider for ASHE product development.

On the publication side, volunteers can offer ideas for publications, potentially acting as authors or content subject matter experts. On the education side, volunteers can apply to participate as conference session reviewers, eventually gaining opportunity to participate on the strategic content planning committees that provide recommendations for the education taking place at the conferences.

For ASHE’s e-Learning courses, the education team also seeks content subject matter experts to help author those products. Finally, there are volunteer opportunities to act as user testers for new products before they are launched.

All these opportunities start with ensuring ASHE members have fully completed member profiles, which include fields for listing areas of expertise

How can members access ASHE’s educational resources?

ASHE members can access ASHE education resources in a number of different ways. They can learn about all the in-person, live online and on-demand education ASHE produces on the organization’s website at ashe.org/education.

Additionally, ASHE Chapters produce education through which participants can receive ASHE continuing education credits. There are several ASHE regional conferences that also are a viable option for educational opportunities.

Michael Hrickiewicz is editor-in-chief at Health Facilities Management magazine.