Using one platform to manage clinical site outreach, tracking student evaluations and connecting with preceptors made Yale University's Online PA program's management a breeze.

Why Physician Assistant Programs need a one-stop solution

There are many companies who offer a plethora of services when it comes to helping PA programs with their manual operations. At first glance, it may seem prudent to sign up for the service depending on the problem that needs to be solved. However, in the long run, this approach may be counter-intuitive. It is wiser to find a solution for the entire program, than to find a solution for a specific problem. This is best illustrated with Yale’s PA Program.

“Having Exxat just made it so easy for our site visit for accreditation, instead of our four systems we had before. When asked for a report, we went into Exxat, clicked a button, Boom we were done!”

- James Van Rhee, MS, PA-C, DFAAPA
Program Director, Yale University Physician Assistant Online Program

The PA Online Program at Yale encountered many roadblocks when it came to student evaluations. Previously, they employed technological solutions offered by prominent brands to reach out to the clinical sites. While this allowed for good communication with sites and decent tracking of students in these sites, the solution did not work when it came to other aspects – especially student evaluations.

To counter this, the Yale PA Online Program used another company’s services solely for student evaluations. This new solution helped manage and track evaluations, but it was limited to evaluations alone. With 2 systems in place for managing their program, Yale hit another roadblock when they realized that the software offered no access to preceptors outside the Yale University faculty. This made it difficult for students doing rotations in other states to send and receive evaluations from preceptors.

Ultimately, to solve each of their needs, the Yale PA Online Program had to go software-shopping. What the program needed was a one-stop solution for scheduling rotations, managing evaluation data, and generating in-depth reports for continued accreditation.

Every time Yale PA Online Program faced an issue, they had to go software-shopping. What they needed was a one-stop solution.

Yale PA Online Program + Exxat = Convenience, Flexibility & Resource Savings

In 2014, James Van Rhee, Program Director of the Yale PA Online Program, onboarded Exxat’s STEPS and PLAN(now part of Exxat Prism) solutions for placements and curriculum management to bring these issues to a close.

Yale University could now run a program of 200 students with 3 personnel alone. By offloading some of the critical tasks to Exxat STEPS(now part of Exxat Prism), the Yale PA Online Program could cut down manual work time by half. Just a few of these tasks being:

• Housing all site and preceptor information, including licensure and board certification.

• Automatically scheduling rotation sites based on over 1 million computations.

• Automatically sending student health required documents to the site when a student is scheduled.

• Automatically sending digitally integrated evaluations to the preceptor to complete.

Moreover, Exxat made it easy for students to submit their evaluations online and for staff to view submissions of evaluations in real time. It also enabled the preceptors to provide feedback to the students with a shorter turnaround time. Students didn’t have to wait for the program to release their grade, as all site information was available on the dashboard.

With Exxat, Yale PA Online Program achieved time savings of almost 50% and could manage 200 students with only 3 personnel.

The biggest benefit for Van Rhee (Program Director) was that he did not have to browse through multiple systems anymore to get the data he needed for accreditation. Van Rhee could easily look at a cohort as a whole, or any individual student. It allowed him to clearly track competencies, quickly retrieve evaluations and accreditation, and simply generate customized reports.

Trusting Exxat for all PA needs

The solution as a whole allowed the Yale PA Online Program to unlock all the benefits of student convenience, require less manual work for the administrative staff, and experience greater accessibility and flexibility in reporting.

James Van Rhee’s recommendation to all other institutes looking to onboard Exxat is to “maximize your use of Exxat, don’t make the mistake of entering the bare minimum. Dump all of your information into Exxat and not keep information in different places. Put everything into Exxat from the start and let it work for you.”

Exxat Prism

Exxat Prism is an all-in-one Education Management Platform for Health Science Programs. It streamlines Clinical Education, Curriculum Management, Document Compliance, and Contract Tracking & Sharing.

Prism manages it all from placement availability, site details and accreditation reports to required documents, patient logs, curriculum mapping, and evaluations. Our integrated database helps you to seamlessly collect and manage everything through just a few clicks.

You can learn more about Prism and request a demo at https://exxat.com/solutions/prism/

Key Takeaways from Yale PA Online Program:

• Exxat made it easy for students to complete evaluations, irrespective of the location of their sites.

• Exxat allowed the Yale PA Online Program to cut down their costs in half when it came to their personnel’s time and effort.

• With the interconnected systems, Exxat offered easier accessibility to all reporting data and more flexibility in generating customized reports.