American Heart Association of Oregon & SW Washington

I am a 22 year AHA training instructor and a former 20 year Paramedic. I am writing you to share my disappointment with AHA's recent price change in the Heartsaver cards in the amount in $17.00 per card . In your recent update letter it states the price change was in response to a student research that had shown value in the content in the student workbook before, during and after training. After the 2015 mandatory change in requiring all students to have workbooks prior to attending the course a group of us instructors started conducting our own research of the benefit of the workbooks. In our research as well as talking with other AHA instructors, we have discovered that most of our regular customers and clients found very little value in the workbook before, during and after the training course. Many of our regular clients provide annual refresher training in first aid/cpr. Since 2015, I have asked all students if they found value in the workbook during their course as well as if they ever referred to the workbook after the course. As little as 5 % of those students stated they referred to the workbook after the course and even less actually referred to the book before and during the course. I also asked the students why they did not refer to the workbook as a resource? Majority of the responses were either there was too much information to search in the workbook or most of the questions they had after the course was found easier online or simply just emailing the instructors. In addition, most students simply misplaced the workbook after the training course and never consider it to be a resourceful reference guide. After the 2015 workbook requirement and the cost of the workbook we discovered it to be outrageously expensive and just not cost effective to our customers. Also in 2015, AHA made it mandatory for instructors to purchase cards after each training course. For me, my facility is 30 miles away from our training center. In order for me to make sure our students receive their cards in a timely manner, as a courtesy I typically would drive to my training center (60 mile round trip) and purchase the cards so my clients would not have to wait to receive their cards in the mail. So here are the results we've concluded of your recent price changes. As a former paramedic, I understand changes and updates need to be made based on what is more medically beneficial in providing more effective high quality first aid and cpr. But the price changes we see from an instructor or client point of view are clearly unjustified, unreasonable and have no benefit to instructors or the public. It has become too expensive and we don't like having to justify the constant changes and price increases to our clients. You have forced us to encourage our clients to use other training courses other than AHA. Therefore, you are losing instructors and customers! So, for what it's worth, I once felt a sense of pride in being an AHA instructor. But now believe AHA has lost focus of what providing public and healthcare education is all about and lost the respect I once had for what AHA represents. It's become a business in focused on making money and taking advantage of your customers rather than providing good quality service. As instructors, we actually believe in what we do and we genuinely care about saving lives. Some instructors actually make a living teaching training courses but feel it's no longer worth their efforts and are looking into teaching for other training providers. And as a business owner, I personally understand we have to make money in order to keep our doors open. But there is a balance to staying afloat and providing great customer service. Our success thrives on customer service and affordable prices and we actually listen to our customers needs and what will be beneficial to them. We would rather work with organizations that still believe in providing good quality service. As soon as I have fewer AHA clients, I will be resigning my AHA instructor status.
1 8 years ago (13-11-2017)

I think it is pretty sad, when you get a phone solisitation from the American Heart Association (per caller ID) and when you answer, you get hung up on.
1 9 years ago (08-12-2016)