CE Broker’s Sr. Director of External Affairs & Government Relations Kelly Parker shares how to modernize continuing education at your regulatory agency. She also discusses incorporating artificial intelligence into CE systems in a “safe and reasonable way.” Listen to our entire interview with Kelly Parker on our Talkin’ SaaS podcast.
“I consider myself a public servant at heart,” explains Parker. “I’ve spent the majority of my career working in state government in various states and various roles. And I think most significant to what I do today, I have been the executive leader of healthcare regulatory agencies. Therefore, I have that firsthand experience and truly understand the complexity of the regulatory landscape, the pain points, and all of the challenges that some of our partners have.”
Kelly Parker: Continuing education or continuing professional development, continuous learning is relevant in a lot of professional spaces. But most of the time when we deal with it through CE broker, it’s because it’s required as a component of licensure. And so, you know, a regulatory board has three core duties. And I can say this as I used to be a regulator, and so licensure, enforcement and regulation. And so not only do you have to, as a regulator, ensure licensees are qualified and competent to receive that initial license. But you also have to ensure that they are competent, and they maintain their competency through continuing education to ensure that they qualify for that renewal license. But quite honestly, that piece to the puzzle can be really complex, really confusing and just sometimes causes a headache for licensees and board staff.
CE Broker is basically a modernized full lifecycle continuing education management solution for that purpose for licensing boards that connects to the entire regulatory ecosystem for free. Our product has been around for over 20 years, and over time, we’ve enhanced and elevated our product to meet the needs of our partner boards and professionals. But we’ve also significantly grown our footprint. Today, we currently partner with over 250 licensure boards in over half of the US states supporting millions of professionals every day. And you asked how we do it as far as the unique users and I would share that from the perspective of regulatory licensing boards, our board suite is totally customized to match profession specific laws and rules and is used to complete paperless audits, monitor compliance reports, review courses, review provider applications, and even enforce disciplinary educational requirements. And then we also have two other suites. We have a suite for you know the licensee and the licensee experience as I like to call it that gives them just the total tools for success. So, we provide professionals with accounts where they can report CPE credits, respond to audits, find approved continuing education offerings and manage anything they need to do with regard to continuing education for that licensure renewal.
And then finally, I would say we are also integrated with board approved educational providers through our providers suite. And providers can apply for any necessary board approvals, publish accredited offerings and report attendance rosters or completion data on behalf of licensees. And I think the cool thing about all of it, and the connection through a universal platform is that it’s all in real time. So if a licensee is reporting, self-reporting continuing education credit, they will instantly see that update on their transcript or if a provider is reporting on behalf of the licensee, it will immediately go to their transcript and the board will immediately have access to it.
Kelly Parker: Absolutely. As I noted earlier, you know, I’m a former regulator. I have done state government licensing work for quite some time. And it’s funny. A long time ago, they used to embrace reciprocity. It kind of went away. And even reciprocity, it’s coming back, right? But it’s just not your traditional one way to get a license anymore. We’re seeing compacts and universal recognition, reciprocity, all of these other alternative pathways to kind of fill the void and fill the needs for the community in general, especially in the healthcare space. And so, I think one thing we understand greatly as a company for over the last 20 years in the industry is that your solution needs to adapt to the environment and not the other way around. So, we have adopted to this new way, this new environment.
I’ve had the pleasure and the honor to work directly with the interstate medical licensure compact. And if anyone is familiar with that, it’s a pathway to expedited licensure. And it is not a mutual recognition model when you deal with compact models. And so, the difference there is that, for instance, with the medical compact, every single licensee that goes through the compact to get a license has to then comply with the CE requirements in each state for which they’re granted that expedited licensure. So, you know, I may have had a traditional license one way, but I went and got a compact license through the medical compact in five other states. Well, guess what? Now, I have to keep up with those CE requirements in five different states, not just my home state. So, again, to alleviate that burden. We had some conversations. Actually, one of our partner boards said, hey, Kelly, can you can you talk to the interstate medical licensure compact, and help us out further and see if there’s a way to streamline things for us a little bit more? And it really triggered some super productive conversations. And today, we have a connection and an integration, working on the integration with the interstate medical licensure compact to streamline that renewal experience for licensees and also allow them to better manage their CE requirements for each state in which they receive a compact license.
So ultimately, you know, to your point, it’s like we have to find ways in which we can adapt to that environment and keep up with the trends in licensure and compacts. You know, we can work with anyone, but the medical compact is just a great example of CE is definitely involved in that for the licensees. And we’ve already made forward moves, and super excited just to continue to partner with boards and the interstate medical licensure compact to continue to, you know, push that relationship and just support the community, but most importantly, make it super easy for the licensed professional.
Kelly Parker: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we are seeing this push because of higher level initiatives for government modernization that involves not only agency process optimization, but also focus on user centric services for the professional. So, it It’s not just about eliminating the barriers to get a license anymore. But it’s also about reducing the burdens to maintain a license. So, we’re seeing, you know, push for a lot less red tape, red tape, rollback acts, and just quite honestly, more simplicity for everyone. You know, you want to modernize government services. I’ve also heard simply that, you know, in some states, they’re saying government services should act and work at the speed of private business. And so, I think there’s that thought process out there. But then it’s also what does the user need? And the user is not just staff, it’s the licensed professional that’s interacting with the system on a daily basis for that license renewal purpose.
Kelly Parker: Obviously, everyone is talking about AI and GenAI. And I think it’s fair to say we have already made moves to implement tools that incorporate safe and reasonable use of AI in our solution. You know, for instance, like others I know, think about chatbots to allow users to get instantaneous answers to questions for more customer friendly service. But bottom line, we are embracing AI in a safe and reasonable way.
And I would just note that it’s also being really cognizant about the fact that with AI a lot of state governments don’t know what they’re going to be allowed to do with it at this point. Sometimes there’s a taskforce still being formed to decide what that forward look is on the regulated use of AI and state government services. I’ve seen some crazy things. It’s like I’ve seen, you must have, you know, so many human interactions, you know, when you’re providing state government services. Or you have to have a disclaimer or disclosure that the licensee is interacting with AI. So, we’re trying to be really smart about it. But also at the same time, I mean, I think we’re just a product-led organization. And so, we’re definitely going to embrace and advance where we can and continue to work on some opportunities behind the scenes for that purpose.
Kelly Parker: What we’re seeing in all gov tech markets, when it deals with third party applications is integration via API. And so that is, ideally how we integrate with a board is integrate directly into their licensure system. And so, when going through that license renewal process, and they have that API integration, they’ll receive messages, like you are applying to CE Broker or you need to check your compliance. That messaging kind of depends on the board, and what they want to say or how they want to message the individual. I call them enhanced customer service features in which they will be triggered to say, hey, you need to go check this or you may not be compliant before you renew.
And so, then the licensee would then be able to log into their CE Broker account and be able to troubleshoot if you will. Now through that API as well, if they have everything that they need, like 100% of our certificates are reported, and we met all of our requirements in that particular renewal cycle, they will be able to proceed with the process. But it does give them that enhanced customer service piece where it’s like, if you’re not, or if you didn’t think about it, you better go check before you proceed.
The last thing licensees want is to be dinged for an administrative fine, or disciplinary action, for failing to meet CE requirements. So, it really is kind of that customer friendly experience and just enhancing customer service of what the board’s offer through that API integration.
Kelly Parker: Yeah, great question. I would say most of the time, these days, we kind of see boards or departments reach out in two different phases, if you will. It’s either we’re looking to modernize, you know, brand new system. And then some just have longstanding end to end solutions that work. They’re like we want to do better. Now it’s time to go back and kind of you know, refresh and update certain things. And we want to include CE Broker, not in our new system but in our current standing system.
So, I would say, you know, when I was an executive director, and we modernized I used to say this was like creating a whole continuing education department. I felt like I just had all of these staff to do everything because I had this support, the client success team. I had the technology. It really was creating a whole department but it really wasn’t that. It was just the technology. And when you modernize it just makes everything 10 times better.
Kelly Parker: So, to learn more about CE Boker by Propelus you can always visit www.propelus.com and select CE Broker under the solutions. I would also encourage any listeners to follow our LinkedIn pages. For instance, this month is nurses’ month. And since we already have a heavy connection to the environment, and the nursing community, including the Daisy Foundation, we just believe in giving back to the nursing community and others. And so, we have a lot of campaigns that run through our LinkedIn pages, as well as a lot of ways to follow what we’re doing and how we’re partnering with the community to better support them. So, the LinkedIn pages are always super helpful in addition to the website.
Thanks so much, Sam. It was such a great opportunity to sit down and chat with you more about this and I really appreciate it.
Editor’s note: Answers edited for clarity and brevity. To hear the entire interview, listen to our interview with Kelly Parker on our Talkin’ SaaS podcast.
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