A Disruptive Approach to Training Health-Care Talent

In this latest episode, I got to join forces with my colleague Ann Somers Hogg, who leads health-care research at the Christensen Institute and hosts the podcast, Life-Centered Health Care. Our guest was Craig Sprinkle, CEO of MedCerts. We discuss how MedCerts trains health-care professionals, from how it delivers hands-on learning through remote instruction to the savings students have incurred and future innovations on the horizon.

Michael Horn:

Welcome, everyone. Michael Horn here. And I'm thrilled for today's episode of our podcast, which will be different from what we've done in the past. And that's because we're doing a joint podcast, if you will, so that this episode will actually air in two different places. There's, of course, my podcast, the Future of Education, where we're dedicated to building a world in which all individuals can build their passions, fulfill their potential, and live a life of purpose. And then we're partnering today with Life-Centered Health Care, a podcast that my colleague at the Christensen Institute, Ann Somers Hogg, produces. And Life-Centered Health Care delves into what disrupting health care really means. Not the buzz phrase, but what does it really look like and how do we do it? And how do the innovation theories that we use at the Clayton Christensen Institute shed light on the evolution of the broader health-care ecosystem to inspire others seeking to transform health care? So first, a welcome to my co-host for today. She's a senior research fellow at the Christensen Institute, Ann Somers. So good to see you. Happy New Year.

Ann Somers Hogg:

Great to see you. Happy New Year. Thank you for having me today. I'm excited about this.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad we're teaming up together on this. And for those wondering why we're doing a joint podcast, I will say the reason is because those who fill the jobs in health care, of course, do so through forms of medical education. And that's a place in sore need of innovation itself as we think about that broader ecosystem. So with that, I'll introduce our guest for today who's going to shed light on all this. Craig Sprinkle, CEO of MedCerts since 2022, you're an InStride company. And of course, Craig joined MedCerts in 2018 in a combined role as the CFO and COO and has served as the CFO since 2020 before stepping into the CEO role. So, Craig, great to see you. Thank you for joining us.

Craig Sprinkle:

Yes, thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here. So thank you. Great to see both of you.

The MedCerts Origin Story

Michael Horn:

Yeah, you bet. So I want to start actually, you know, predating you at MedCerts, but what led to the launch of MedCerts, You know, what's the market need you all were fulfilling and the credentials that you're really helping fill in the health-care system. I will say, like, I had the chance to watch some of the formation of it, but I've never actually heard from someone at MedCerts how they view the opportunity and market need

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, absolutely, so as you said, it kind of predates me a little bit, but I'm happy to share that. First of all, we just celebrated our 15-year anniversary a year ago. MedCerts originally was founded and frankly still operates very similarly today, in a way that we saw a lack of quality online health-care training that existed 15 years ago that would quickly elevate students to be able to gain new skills, be job ready, and be ready to step into a job or a career. So we saw that gap, we saw an opportunity to ultimately fulfill that. At the same time. And what still carries forward today is that we're addressing a skills gap in the health care and IT industry. Employer needs are continuing to grow. They're looking for more out of job candidates and people that they want to fill vacancies that they have. And there's just a lack of available talent. So we saw a need not only in terms of delivery of that curriculum and delivery of that education, but also fulfilling a need on the employer side to really train towards skills that employers are looking for and making sure that those students are ultimately job ready when they come out of that training.

Ann Somers Hogg:

Yeah, you mentioned that there was a lack of quality online medical training. Could you tell us a little bit about how do you compare with other market offerings in terms of thinking about your business model? So what are the resources and processes that you have in place to educate your learners?

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know that we'll probably talk a little bit more about delivery models and things like that as we continue the conversation, but if you kind of rewind 15 years ago, you know, a lot of things that the experience that a student would have is mostly like in classroom instruction, there wasn't a lot of hands on experience being taught. There wasn't a lot of applicable skills being taught inside that classroom experience. And that was ultimately leading to a gap whenever a person would walk out of that training to ultimately be ready to step into a job. We saw that, and I don't think that it was perfect at the time 15 years ago, whenever we first started delivering this, but bringing more of those applicable skills into an application environment where the student is not only listening to instruction on screen, but they're also learning on how to apply those skills as they're learning and going through that training. So that's a little bit of the difference, if you will, between the delivery of something that we were doing at the time online versus more traditional in classroom instruction. Not as much hands-on experience and not as much interactivity, if you will, within the classroom itself.

Providing Hands-On Learning in an Online Environment

Ann Somers Hogg:

Got it, got it. Thanks for explaining that. And this is probably going to sound like a silly question, but I want to dive into it because if it's an online based education program. You mentioned the importance of the hands-on training and a lot of medical training involves that hands-on experience. So how do you provide these hands-on learning opportunities for students in that online environment?

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of our programs first and foremost involve a clinical requirement. So there is hands-on training required in order to even obtain the credential to begin with, in many of the programs that we train towards. The way that we accomplish that is a couple of different ways. One, we have a lot of partnerships with employers whereby they have agreed to allow our students to come on site, in their environment, work alongside someone else and ultimately obtain those skills. So they're not only taking what they've learned in classroom, if you will, through our didactic portion of our training, but also taking that into a live environment and applying it alongside someone that's already working in the job or the role that they're ultimately seeking to be a part of. So some of that is through those relationships that we have. We also work with a lot of local training facilities that ultimately host students to allow them to come into a simulated classroom environment, or, sorry, a work environment to where they can do the same thing, it's just not on site with a particular employer. So we do that in both ways. We do it through partnerships that we have with employers. Then we also do that through training sites that we have relationships with, whether that's regionally or locally based, to where our students can go into those facilities and ultimately complete those clinical requirements and hands-on requirements that they have. The third element of that is that we also have skill assessments built into our training itself online. So as the student goes out on site, they get some of that hands-on experience, they come back, if you will, into the virtual classroom. We have assessments that we will walk a student through to ultimately test their proficiency on how well they understood some of those things that they learned. And they're going through assessments on a regular basis and getting feedback on areas where they can and need to improve.

The Student Experience

Michael Horn:

It's super interesting to hear you sort of break that down, Craig, because what is coming across actually is that you weren't just innovating in the area of online education, but you were also innovating against the traditional model, as you described, to create a much more interactive experience, a more active learning experience it sounds like. Just talk us through what a typical student experience looks like over the course of their certification program. But also maybe Ann Somers, we can ask the question about business model in terms of program costs relative to other options in a moment but Craig, just focus on like the interactive learning experience itself and how that differs and how you facilitated that over the course of their certification.

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, sure, absolutely. And I guess I'll preface this by saying that obviously every student experience is a little bit different. But by and large, when a student first enrolls in their program, first and foremost they're looking for that alternative route in order to get a fast track into a career. That's sort of fundamental to what we do, is that we offer that affordable training. It's something that we can offer in a fast and rapid way for them, it's much more affordable at little to no debt to that individual at the end of the day. And it provides that faster path into a career that they're ultimately looking for. Remember, the end goal is not the training itself, it's the job or it's the career that they're trying to build towards that we're really trying to help them with. Generally speaking, our students, once they enroll in one of our programs, they're typically going through a three to six month process, depending on the program, whereby they're completing initially a didactic portion of the training. That's the virtual online piece of it, typically that's built around quizzes, virtual assessments, interactivity, there's gamification if you will in a lot of the training that we do, there's real time feedback that they're getting through avatars and things on screen that they are interacting with and then that's followed up in some cases depending, on the program of course, with a clinical component that we were just talking about where that student will then go out on site, complete a lot of the hands on training that's required associated with their program and learn a lot of that in person either through an employer or training facility that we were talking about. They're taking regular assessments along the way, so they're getting continuous feedback around areas that they're doing well in, areas that they need to improve upon. And there's one to one support that we're ultimately offering them as well. They have an advisor that's assigned to them from day one. That advisor follows them all the way through, providing support, providing encouragement. As you can imagine, in an online environment it's very self led, self paced, it's sometimes very individualized and there can be an element of loneliness that comes along with that. So having someone that they can connect with on a regular basis, we feel is critically important to that success of that student. Along the way as well, they get connected with a career coach. That career coach is also helping them begin to develop a resume, begin to go through skill development as it relates to having a successful interview, getting connected with employers. While we certainly don't guarantee employment at the end of a program, we help students as much as we can get connected with job opportunities and openings that may exist in the geographical area that they're a part of. So that gives you a little bit of a window into, I guess, more of the specifics of how we deliver the training, but also the support and the service that we give along the way as well.

Access and Affordability

Ann Somers Hogg:

Yes, that's really interesting, especially how you pointed to the connection to the advisor and how they're really helping them through the process, so that there is that feeling that people would probably be getting in the one on one or sorry, in the in person environment where they have that one on one connection with a teacher or an advisor. So one of the things you mentioned towards the beginning of the explanation about the typical student experience is it's an affordable training and it's a fast and rapid way to get a certification with little to no debt. So could you talk a little bit about how your program costs and maybe the options for student payment differ from traditional models? What sets you apart and makes it more affordable or makes people able to get through with little to no debt?

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think I mentioned a minute ago that typically our programs are structured to cover training that goes around either between three weeks up to about six months. From a pricing perspective, those programs range as low as $2,000 for a full certification program, all the way up to $6,000, but generally the average is around $4,000 at the end of the day. And whenever you kind of stack that up against, you know, a traditional undergrad program or even course hour costs at the four year college level, it's much more affordable and less expensive whenever you start to compare it on that level. At the same time, the speed at which someone can move through that training, first and foremost is self paced, which is a huge advantage to an adult learner who has a lot of distractions in their life at the end of the day, they do want to dedicate the time to getting the additional training, but they may not be able to sit and dedicate 8, 9, 10 hours a day to doing it. So we allow that flexibility in their scheduling to do that at their own pace. The funding and the ability of someone to be able to pay for their programs actually comes from a number of different places. Number one is that a lot of our students come through relationships that we have with employers. So there's typically a tuition reimbursement policy behind a student or other funding that's available through their employer, that from a student's perspective or that employee's perspective, it's basically no out of pocket cost for them at all. They're simply utilizing those benefits that they have through their employer. Some of the students that we ultimately interact with are also eligible for either state or federal level grant funding, depending on the program, depending on where they're taking advantage of that training, and they're able to tap into some of that funding as well. And then lastly, we also provide very affordable tuition assistance programs, payment plans, that allow a student to effectively take out a loan for their program. But it's a relatively low payment in the grand scheme of when you think about traditional student loans and the cost of tuition and things like that, it's a much more affordable monthly cost for them that they're paying for as they go through their training. And by the time they frankly complete their training, they have none of that debt left at that point in time. So they're walking out not only with a credential, but no further debt or payment obligation as it relates to the program that they just took advantage of.

Michael Horn:

Super interesting on a few fronts, Craig, I have a set of questions around outcomes and success. But before going there, just to double back on something that you just said as you were describing the loan, you know, when the few circumstances where people are taking out loans, it sounds like it's not federal student loans. So do you all not participate in the Title Four, you know, federal government, right, funding of higher ed?

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, that's correct. So we don't actually take advantage of any of the Title Four funding that's out there today. The loan programs that I'm referring to, those are programs that we've structured internally ourselves. So if you think about it for a second, we are ultimately underwriting, you know, the default risk, if you will, associated with a lot of those payment plans. But quite frankly, we find that the performance is very, very positive. Because at the end of the day, you do have students that enroll in these programs that are very motivated. They are looking for an opportunity to take the training and very quickly move into a job and a career in a very short time period. So we see the performance of those payment plans, frankly, being much better in a lot of cases than what you would see through some of the other funding sources that you mentioned. And that allows us to continue to just do more of that, you know, over time.

Evaluating Outcomes

Michael Horn:

Super interesting, because it strikes me that that does a few things, right? One, by not participating in Title Four, you all save cost in compliance, but you also get permission to do a lot more innovation in terms of program delivery, distribution, cost of acquisition of students, so forth. But secondly, I would imagine because you're doing the loan programming, your incentives are actually well aligned with your students because you are bearing the risk just as they are which is a central problem right now of the higher ed financing, right, is that the institution doesn't have any skin in the game on that. Let's talk about metrics of success and value and so forth. I know this a little bit because I was at Guild, I think when MedCerts became one of the providers for helping employees be able to move into health-care roles, depending on where they were with their employers. And a big thing for the Guild was we want to choose online programs that serve adults well. We want to choose programs that have good outcomes. How all do you measure outcomes? What are they, and how do they compare to traditional models?

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, first and foremost, I mentioned a minute ago that the end goal and the ultimate outcome that we're looking for is the student's placement into a job. And again, that can take different forms when you're talking about relationships that we have with employers, because some of those students and those learners are already existing employees of that particular employer, but they are looking for upskilling or reskilling opportunities so that they can move into that next role or move into the next step in their career ladder. So ultimately, that is the end goal that we're looking for. Beyond that, it's more the traditional outcomes that you would see, regardless of it being MedCerts or any other training provider or education institution, you know, number one is whether you call it a graduation rate or a completion rate, that is something that we look very closely at in terms of how the rate at which our students are completing successfully their training and their programs. I would say the next largest or equally most important one is ultimately the employment rate. And we look at that very regularly. We are surveying our students on a regular basis. We stay in contact with them post graduation after they've completed their certification training, to stay in contact with them to make sure that either A, they did get the job that they were looking for or B they are looking for something different and if we can be of assistance to them to help connect them with other employers and other opportunities, we definitely want to do that for them. I will tell you that comparatively, and I'm certainly biased whenever I say this is that I believe that our outcomes are ratably better than what you would see in more of the higher ed space. Our completion rates or graduation rates are well in excess of 70% across all of our programs. That's blended by the way, some are a little bit lower and certainly some are much higher. But that's the overall average. And the way that we ultimately look at it's not traditional placement at the end of the day, but we look at employment and our employment rates of all of our graduates again are upwards of 70% or higher. And again that to be fair, that's a blend at times of both in field and out of field. But the vast majority of the employment that we're typically reporting on and looking at is infield associated with that. So there's other outcomes certainly, but those are the biggest ones that we definitely look at.

Michael Horn:

Yeah, go ahead Ann Somers.

Ann Somers Hogg:

Oh, I was just gonna say when you're looking at employment rate, is that employment rate at completion of the program or is that at one year, six months? Is it at a certain time period?

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, it's actually over a time horizon. So it's at the point that they have completed their program and then 12 months following that time period. Because you have to remember again, depending on the program, there are clinical requirements that still have to be completed. That student still needs to sit for their certification exam. So it's really getting them in that employment opportunity in that time period immediately following graduation.

Ann Somers Hogg:

Great, thanks for explaining that.

What’s Next?

Michael Horn:

Yeah, it's super interesting. Just one more question before I turn it to Anne Somers for sort of a final question, if you will. But when you talk about those metrics, those are actually stunning metrics for on ground programs, for an online program, those are astronomical. As you know, when you're talking about excess of 70% graduation rate in particular. And obviously the ROI to the student is very clear because these certifications have very clear labor market value. So the return is very clear. I'm curious, I guess a two part question as we think about where MedCerts maybe goes from here. Apprenticeships are becoming a very hot topic in the education career space, particularly in health care, is one of those places being identified for them. I'm curious if you're doing anything there and then the second question is what are you doing with AI in terms of program delivery as well? Because that's obviously another hot area. So AI, apprenticeships, things that we ought to keep an eye on there.

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, absolutely. So let me address the first one first. So I would say in terms of a traditional apprenticeship, we are doing a little bit of that, but not significantly. What we do a lot of frankly, is more of like externship placement. So again, in terms of an employer and ultimately what they're looking for from our graduates, sometimes depending on the program of study, the vacancies that they have, they may not look to fill that vacancy right away, but they want that person to come out on site and almost do further on the job training with the employer in an externship type setting, and then that leads to a job for them at that point in time. Apprenticeships can get a little bit complicated, to be quite honest, about what it takes to manage that at the employer level. It's not that we shy away from that. It's just a little bit more difficult to execute. At the end of the day, we find that again, to change the word a little bit, you know, a traditional externship provides that faster and easier path to where it's a little bit of like test driving from the employer's perspective and test driving from the employee's perspective. And we find that that works out pretty well.

Michael Horn:

What about in terms of AI before I turn it over?

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, yeah. So I would say probably 12, 18 months ago, we really started in earnest to start to embed elements of AI into a lot of our training. The best examples that I can give you today is that we have a mental health support specialist program that we train towards today. And part of that training, a good core of the training, quite frankly, is on the screen interaction with a persona that an individual learner is interacting with. A patient that is already pre wired, if you will, with a certain personality and based on the nature of the conversation, obviously intelligent large language models, and we start to build up that intelligence in the interaction that starts to build that relationship and that conversation as the person navigates through, through that interview process with the patient. So that's just one example of that. I will also tell you that we're actually leveraging AI quite a bit from a product development perspective to just help expedite how quickly we can move through new product development and bring new offerings to market as well. So I don't want to diminish that fact, but we're, I mean, we're finding every way possible that we can leverage AI in the most positive way.

MedCerts’ Work With High Schoolers

Ann Somers Hogg:

Great. And as Michael mentioned, I'll try and close it out with an all encompassing question here. So is there anything about what makes MedCerts unique that we didn't ask you but you wish we had? And if so, what's the question and what's the answer?

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, I mean, I think we had some really good conversation by the way, so thank you for that and I really appreciate all the questions. I think the main thing that we maybe didn't talk about, that I'm particularly excited about, is that what are the additional things that we're really doing to have a material impact on the vacancy crisis in health care? And I would say one of the bigger things among many, quite frankly, that we're doing is really focusing on early talent development and early skill development. And what I mean by that is that we're accomplishing that by really reaching down into the high school population and working with K12 providers to really bring our training into like juniors and seniors in high school, so it becomes part of their path towards graduation. And we kind of look at it as like a triple benefit at the end of the day. And what I mean by that is in many cases a student will have the opportunity to walk out of high school with a high school diploma. They will have a nationally recognized certification, and in some cases they will also have credit for prior learning associated with that certification at the college level if they choose to go down that path. And if you think about that, that is a massive cost saver for that learner at the end of the day where they may get credit for upwards of a semester's worth of education at the college level, which saves them a tremendous amount of tuition costs downstream, not to mention the skills that they've already built before they ever came out of high school. So that's just one path, if you will. But for those that are maybe not going down the four year college path or the two year college path, they are ready through that certification to step into a job that ultimately an employer is looking at that skill set and saying they're ready to be hired at the end of the day. So that's an area that obviously I'm really excited about, you can tell by the tone of my voice at the end of the day. But it's really something that we've seen a really large movement towards in the last 12 to 15 months.

Ann Somers Hogg:

Absolutely. I'm so glad that you brought that up. A few of the interesting models that I think I've sent on to Michael and another one of our education researchers at the institute have really piqued my interest when I see that a large health system is partnering with local high schools in order to do what you were talking about, in order to help those juniors and seniors really have a career path as soon as they leave high school.

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, that's a great point. I think to your point, employers are also seeing that opportunity where they can ultimately tap into talent earlier as well and not necessarily be solely relying on a training provider, you know, to bring all of that talent to them. They can find that through that partnership with that local high school district. And then we simply become an element of allowing or enabling that training to get that student job ready.

Michael Horn:

Yeah. It seems to me also I like it for all the reasons you guys have said, but it's dual enrollment with a lot more teeth in it because it's a meaningful credential that's backed up by a certification. So it's not just sort of the high school said you learned it. You can actually show that they've learned it and it has value whether they go labor market or college. I think that's going to be much more meaningful as a set of credentials.

Craig Sprinkle:

Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Horn:

Perfect. Well, look, thank you, Craig, so much, obviously, for the work that you're doing, for joining us on both Life Centered Health Care and the Future of Education today. You get two for one out of this conversation with us. And for all you tuning in, thank you for joining us. Ann Somers, great to see you. We'll look forward to more conversations on both of our shows. Thank you so much.

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