More Than a Platform: Introducing CHCI’s Expanded Workforce Development Partnership

Creative Health Care Insight is entering a new chapter in how we support healthcare organizations. 

CHCI has always provided purpose-built technology for competency management, professional advancement, workforce data collection, peer feedback, mentoring, succession planning, and other essential workforce-development processes. Now, we are formalizing what has increasingly become central to our work: serving not simply as a technology provider, but as a strategic healthcare workforce development partner.

Our expanded approach brings together CHCI’s flexible platform with healthcare-specific expertise, strategic guidance, education, consulting, hands-on implementation support, and ongoing partnership. It is designed to help organizations do more than adopt new software. We work alongside clients to build stronger programs, bring those programs to life through technology, and sustain them over time.

Our recent announcement reflects a straightforward belief: healthcare organizations should not have to choose between capable technology and the expert support needed to use it successfully.

Why CHCI Is Expanding Its Partnership Approach

Healthcare organizations are working to strengthen onboarding, competency assessment, professional advancement, workforce data collection, peer feedback, mentoring, succession planning, preceptor development, and other programs that support employees throughout their professional journeys.

Yet many of these processes remain spread across disconnected platforms, spreadsheets, paper forms, and manual workflows. While technology can help centralize information and reduce administrative work, introducing another software platform does not automatically solve the underlying challenge.

Technology cannot independently determine what a workforce-development program should accomplish. It cannot assess whether an existing process still serves the organization’s needs, align a program with organizational culture and priorities, prepare stakeholders for change, or build the internal commitment needed to sustain that program. That work requires healthcare-specific expertise, thoughtful planning, meaningful education, and hands-on support.

CHCI’s expanded partnership approach brings these elements together. We begin by listening to each organization’s needs, challenges, workforce, culture, and strategic priorities. From there, we help clients clarify desired outcomes, strengthen workflows, configure the platform, educate users, support implementation, and continue refining their programs as their needs evolve. It is not technology for technology’s sake. It is technology shaped around a clear purpose and supported by people who understand the work.

What Does It Mean to Be More Than a Platform?

A software vendor provides organizations with access to technology. A strategic healthcare workforce development partner helps organizations decide what they need to build, why it matters, how it should work, and how technology can support it.

For CHCI, being more than a platform means recognizing that no two healthcare organizations are identical. Each organization has its own culture, workforce, goals, terminology, leadership structure, existing processes, and areas of opportunity. That is why our work does not begin with a predetermined platform configuration. It begins with discovery. We take the time to understand what an organization is currently doing, what challenges it is experiencing, what outcomes it wants to achieve, and who will be involved in the process. These conversations help create a stronger foundation for both the program and the technology supporting it.

Depending on the organization and solution, that partnership may include:

• Assessing current processes and identifying opportunities for improvement
• Clarifying program goals and desired outcomes
• Designing or strengthening workflows
• Configuring the platform around organizational needs
• Educating leaders, educators, managers, preceptors, and employees
• Supporting communication and implementation planning
• Providing guidance through launch and adoption
• Evaluating progress and refining the program over time

Instead of asking organizations to reshape their goals around a piece of software, CHCI helps shape the technology around the organization’s goals.

Connecting Technology With Healthcare Expertise

Healthcare workforce development requires more than technical knowledge. It requires an understanding of how healthcare organizations operate and how workforce programs affect the people participating in them. The decisions made during implementation can influence how easily educators monitor orientation, how managers evaluate competency, how employees navigate professional advancement, how leaders identify future talent, and how organizations use workforce information to guide planning.

That is why healthcare expertise is embedded in CHCI’s partnership approach. Our team and consulting partners understand the challenges involved in designing, implementing, and sustaining workforce-development programs. This allows us to support both the technical and strategic sides of the work.

Technology provides the structure. Expertise helps ensure that the structure supports something meaningful.

Supporting Initial and Ongoing Competency Development

CHCI’s Competency Suite brings initial and ongoing competency management into one connected platform.

For initial competency and orientation, healthcare organizations may use CHCI to support a traditional orientation approach or TSAM®. The platform provides customizable competencies, progress tracking, communication tools, and flexible workflows that help educators, preceptors, leaders, and new employees understand progress and identify learning needs.

CHCI platform clients implementing TSAM® also receive exclusive access to implementation education and consulting led by Dr. Ellen Joswiak, TSAM® co-innovator and CHCI Chief Clinical Education Consultant. CHCI is the only technology partner with the legal rights to offer TSAM® implementation education and consulting. This one-of-a-kind support helps organizations move beyond simply placing an orientation process into a digital platform. Clients can receive guidance as they plan their implementation, educate stakeholders, prepare preceptors, align technology with their approach, and work to sustain TSAM® over time.

For ongoing competency, CHCI is the only platform with the legal rights and permissions to digitally support the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™. Organizations may use the model or their own preferred competency-assessment methodology within the platform.

CHCI clients using the Donna Wright Competency Assessment Model™ may also access exclusive education and consulting with Donna Wright herself. This connects the technology with direct guidance from the creator of the model, helping organizations align their processes, education, and platform configuration with an outcome-focused approach to competency assessment.

Strengthening Preceptor Development

Preceptors play a critical role in helping employees transition into new clinical roles, develop competency, and build confidence. However, organizations may struggle with inconsistent expectations, limited preparation, or a lack of shared understanding about the preceptor role.

CHCI platform clients have exclusive access to healthcare-specific preceptor development education and consulting led by Dr. Ellen Joswiak.

This customizable support can help organizations:

• Define and strengthen the preceptor role
• Establish clearer expectations
• Build practical preceptor skills
• Increase confidence among preceptors
• Connect preceptor development with orientation and competency goals
• Create a more consistent experience for new employees

By connecting preceptor development with the technology and processes supporting orientation, organizations can create a more coordinated approach to transition and initial competency development.

Creating Connected Pathways for Professional Growth

Workforce development does not end when orientation is complete or competency has been assessed. Healthcare organizations also need intentional ways to support continued growth, recognize professional contributions, develop future leaders, and understand the capabilities of their workforce.

CHCI’s Professional Portfolio Suite supports several interconnected areas of professional development.

Career Ladders and Professional Advancement

Organizations can build customizable career ladder and professional advancement programs based on points, requirements, or a combination of both.

CHCI helps organizations translate their professional advancement structure into clear digital workflows while reducing paperwork, simplifying documentation review, and improving visibility into participation and outcomes.

The platform can support an established program or help bring a newly designed approach to life.

Demographic Data Collection Component

The Demographic Data Collection Component helps organizations gather and report education, certification, and other professional information used for Magnet®, Pathway to Excellence®, and Practice Transition Accreditation Program® efforts.

By moving away from repeated manual collection, organizations can improve access to workforce information and reduce the administrative burden placed on employees and leaders.

Peer Feedback

The Peer Feedback Component allows organizations to develop customized feedback processes that reflect their competencies, behaviors, values, or professional practice model. CHCI’s peer feedback approach is grounded in a trusted professional practice model while remaining flexible enough to support organizations that bring their own models, expectations, or frameworks to the platform. This helps organizations connect individual feedback with broader professional-development and cultural goals.

Mentoring and Succession Planning

CHCI brings mentoring and succession planning together within one platform, allowing organizations to create flexible programs, track participation, document goals and activity, and evaluate outcomes. This connected approach helps organizations move beyond informal leadership development and create more intentional pathways for preparing future leaders.

Expanding Access to Nursing Excellence Expertise

CHCI has also developed a partnership with Creative Health Care Management (CHCM) that gives CHCI platform clients access to additional consulting and guidance from the Cultures of Excellence team. With more than 75 years of combined nursing excellence experience, this team can support organizations working toward Magnet® or Pathway to Excellence® recognition, strengthening professional governance, advancing mentoring, and addressing broader workforce-development priorities.

This relationship expands the expertise available to CHCI clients and creates opportunities to connect workforce technology with wider organizational goals. Rather than treating competency, professional development, culture, governance, and nursing excellence as completely separate initiatives, organizations can receive support in understanding how these areas intersect.

One Partnership Across the Workforce-Development Journey

Healthcare organizations often manage workforce programs independently. Orientation may be overseen by one team, ongoing competency by another, professional advancement by a committee, and mentoring or succession planning by organizational development or nursing leadership. Each program has its own purpose, but they are all part of the employee’s professional journey.

A more connected approach can help organizations:

• Reduce duplicative documentation
• Improve visibility across programs
• Create clearer development pathways
• Connect competency with continued professional growth
• Identify workforce needs and opportunities
• Support future leaders more intentionally
• Align employee development with organizational priorities

CHCI’s integrated Competency Suite and Professional Portfolio Suite allow organizations to select the components that meet their current needs while creating a foundation that can evolve with them.

The goal is not to require every organization to implement every solution at once. It is to provide a flexible partnership that can support immediate priorities and grow alongside the organization.

Building, Implementing, and Sustaining Meaningful Solutions

A workforce-development program must be more than well designed. It must also work within the realities of the organization. That means leaders need to consider how the program will be communicated, how users will be educated, how responsibilities will be assigned, how progress will be measured, and what support will be available when challenges arise.

CHCI works with clients throughout that process. We help organizations build solutions by defining goals and strengthening processes. We help implement them by configuring the technology, educating users, and supporting planning. We help sustain them through continued guidance, evaluation, and partnership.

This is what it means for CHCI to be more than a platform.

A New Chapter for CHCI and Our Clients

This expanded partnership approach represents an important step forward for Creative Health Care Insight, but it is also a continuation of what has always guided our work. We believe technology should serve people, processes, and purpose. We believe healthcare organizations deserve solutions designed with an understanding of their work. Most importantly, we believe organizations should have a partner who remains invested in their success beyond implementation.

Our role is not simply to provide another piece of software. It is to help healthcare organizations build, implement, and sustain workforce-development solutions that support their employees, strengthen their programs, and advance their goals.

Read the official announcement about CHCI’s formalized strategic partnership model.

Discover What Partnership With CHCI Could Look Like

Whether your organization is strengthening competency assessment, transforming orientation, developing preceptors, redesigning a career ladder, collecting workforce data, establishing peer feedback, or building mentoring and succession-planning programs, CHCI can help.

Our team will work with you to understand where you are, determine what you need, and explore how technology, expertise, education, and implementation support can come together to move your goals forward.

Schedule a personalized demonstration to learn how Creative Health Care Insight can become your strategic healthcare workforce development partner.

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MAGNET®, Magnet Recognition Program®, ANCC Magnet Recognition®, Journey to Magnet Excellence®, Pathway to Excellence® Program, Pathway to Excellence in Long Term Care®, Demographic Data Collection Tool®, DDCT®, Practice Transition Accreditation Program® (PTAP) are registered trademarks of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).

The products and services of Creative Health Care Insight are neither sponsored nor endorsed by ANCC. All rights reserved. The content presented in here is the expressed opinion of the author/presenter and not that of the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).