Benefits of Allied Health Certifications and Professional Development for Your Organization
By: Jenn Hall | June 2025
Encouraging your team to pursue and maintain industry certification is not only a great idea for their individual career and the patients under their care, it also has far-reaching benefits for your organization as well. Although you may already be a champion of professional development and certification within your organization, it never hurts to remind yourself (and possibly others within your team) of the benefits you can expect.
Increased trust and credibility
Promoting a culture of continuous learning and professional excellence can have a positive impact on your organization’s reputation, credibility, and integrity. When more of your team members hold one or more industry certifications, they (and by extension your organization) are demonstrating their commitment to advancing their knowledge and skills and promoting positive patient outcomes. When patients receive high-quality care, their trust in their healthcare providers and the healthcare facility increases. And, when healthcare professionals feel supported and encouraged to continue their education and achieve or maintain certifications, their trust in the organization grows as well.
As the American Board of Physician Specialties so aptly put it, “Without trust and credibility, the provider-patient relationship can unravel.” And according to research from NRC Health, “patients who highly trust their healthcare provider are 300% more likely to recommend them, while employees who trust their organization are 15 times more likely to recommend it as a place to receive care.”
Professional development and allied health certifications are an excellent way to showcase the knowledge, skills, and specialties of your healthcare team. By sharing this information internally with your team and externally to new or prospective patients or team members, you’ll naturally increase the trust and credibility of your organization.
Improved retention
Replacing a team member can cost your organization anywhere between 40% and 200% of that individual’s salary, depending on their seniority, according to Gallup. A recent report from NSI Nursing Solutions states that in 2025, the turnover rate for healthcare professionals working in hospitals ranged from 8.1% to 32.8%, depending on the hospital size (i.e., number of beds), and over the past five years, “the average hospital turned over 107.1% of its workforce.”
Turnover in healthcare isn’t just costly, it can have ripple effects that affect team morale and satisfaction, staffing schedules, patient care quality, burnout rates, and more. Reducing unnecessary turnover is a persistent priority for most healthcare organizations, requiring a multifaceted approach. Professional development must be a component of this strategy. According to a 2024 Talent Retention Report, 60.6% of employees stated that access to professional development opportunities, such as training or educational classes, would encourage them to stay with the organization.
Further, Gallagher’s 2024 U.S. Career Wellbeing Report found that “career development opportunities highly influence both employee engagement and retention.” William F. Ziebell, CEO of Gallagher's Benefits & HR Consulting Division added, "If employees are given more opportunities to develop and advance their knowledge and skills from their employer, they're more likely to gain a sense of purpose in their work leading to increased motivation, engagement and buy-in."
Greater quality of care
Healthcare is an evolving and advancing career field, with research and innovation supporting higher quality of care. That said, new insights and innovation are only effective at improving patient care and delivery if healthcare professionals receive the latest education and training. Industry certification and continuing education are effective methods for introducing your healthcare team to these new advancements.
The American Institute of Health Care Professionals (AIHCP) echoed this statement, stating that “Updated knowledge enables healthcare providers to implement new treatment protocols, reduce medical errors, and adopt evidence-based practices that improve patient outcomes.”
Continuing education can provide much of this new information, including the latest skill techniques and best practices. Additionally, by prioritizing professional development, healthcare teams will be better prepared to earn industry certification, which outwardly signals their increased competence and commitment to optimal patient care.
Improved administrative processes and procedures
Healthcare isn’t just about direct patient care, there are numerous roles that support the business side of healthcare and the flow of operations. For example, medical coding and billing professionals are essential to the healthcare revenue cycle. To ensure optimal reimbursements and reduce claim denials, medical coding and billing professionals must engage in continuing education about new coding changes and any process or procedure updates or recommendations.
For healthcare professionals working directly with electronic systems, such as electronic health records, the value of continuing education and certification is tremendous. There are new advancements in technology every day. Artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare has helped teams with diagnostics, patient monitoring, personalized treatment plans, and streamlining healthcare processes, among other tasks. To ensure your team and the patients your serve get the most out of this technology, it’s important that those team members who interact with it receive the proper training and development on an ongoing basis. Technology advancements don’t stop, after all; so, your team’s professional development shouldn’t stop either.
Enable greater access to professional development for your team
Understanding the value of professional development through education and industry certification is the first step toward creating or further emphasizing your culture of continuous learning and industry recognition of that knowledge and skill. The next step is to partner with an accredited healthcare education provider to enable greater access to relevant training, which will not only increase the knowledge, skills, and confidence of your team members, but will also serve as a gateway to industry certification.
Partnering with U.S. Career Institute may be a great solution for providing greater access to education and certification for your team. U.S. Career Institute provides high-quality distance education, including numerous healthcare certificate and degree programs that increase student competency in their roles and prepare them to sit for relevant industry certification exams. In many cases, we include the cost of specific industry certification exams and respective study materials with the tuition, making the flow of education to credentialing as easy as possible.