Why Onboarding is an Issue You Can't Afford to Ignore

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2 An effective & results-driven onboarding process is more than a cheerful welcome aboard. It s a comprehensive plan that can become a real asset to your organization. An onboarding process not only helps your physicians succeed, it can increase retention, decrease ramp-up time, and improve productivity. Creating a results-based process for new physicians requires that you understand the challenges of onboarding, address them effectively, and then measure the results of your efforts. Why Onboarding is an Issue You Can't Afford to Ignore You may meet every recruiting and hiring goal you set, but if you can't keep the physicians you hire longer than a few years, you'll never be able to out-recruit your losses. It s not unusual for a hospital to lose half the physicians it recruits over five years. As frustrating as that statistic is on the surface, this attrition is also costly. Consider how much your organization spends to recruit and hire a single physician. Add the cost of a guaranteed salary during the new physician's ramp-up time. Then consider the loss of revenue an unfilled position creates. This adds up to a number most hospitals can't afford to bear. The overall average amount of annual revenue a single, full time equivalent generates for his or her hospital is $1.5 million," according to a 2016 Merit, Hawkins and Associates study. Any onboarding program that can reduce turnover and the number of unfilled roles within your organization is worth considering. A resultsbased onboarding process can do just that.

3 An effective onboarding process can also reduce the time required for a physician to come off guarantee by increasing referrals and effectively marketing that physician. When Geisinger Health System started their onboarding program in 2009, an average new physician averaged nine months to reach 60th percentile McGladrey benchmark for productivity, (the productivity benchmark included work Relative Value Units, collections, patient visits and panel sizes.) In just two years, they reduced that average from nine to four months. The reduced ramp-up time saved the health system $9.6 million over three years. 5 Reasons Physicians Leave At Marketware, experience shows that physicians leave a hospital for one or more of the following reasons: 1 Management that does not seek or listen to medical staff input 2 3 The physician s spouse or children are unhappy Lack of tools or support to help the practice grow 4 5 Low patient volume leading to fear of loss of professional skills or income after guaranteed salary Lack of professional interaction, support, or camaraderie with other physicians

4 Developing a Results-Driven Process Each task within an effective onboarding process will fall under one or more of three goals. While the process will vary for different specialties and practices, the goals remain the same. 1 Help the Physician & their Family Put Down Roots in the Community Roots and connections make a family feel welcome. A family with friends and community connections will be more likely to stick around. As a physician, spouse and family members feel more at home, they tend to overlook anything in your community they might not like. A diverse welcoming committee that includes community members can serve as a resource for new families. Members can introduce physicians and their family to other people within your community and help the family make new friends. 2 Manage Internal Logistics that could Impede Ramp-Up Credentialing, IT training, practice setup, and medical staff integration would all fall under this category. If done poorly or left undone, these can not only make for a rocky start. They can impede the physician s ability to see patients and bill for services. This in turn reduces practice volume, revenue, and your income. Items like these require advance planning and often need extra lead time. And with many of these, getting them wrong can permanently sour a relationship. However, when addressed early, they set the stage for a strong partnership. 3 Manage Outreach Marketing & Logistics to Accelerate Ramp-Up Creating an outreach marketing plan and setting up a referral pipeline helps grow a physician s practice. Coordinating with the new physician to agree on messaging and strategy helps ensure the success of these efforts. Tracking the efficacy of those efforts helps you do more of what works and less of what doesn t. Planning should also begin well before a physician s first day. Clearly, a results-based onboarding process is more than a way of giving a physician information. It s a plan of action for multiple people in multiple departments. It even includes people outside your organization. Your process streamlines and organizes your efforts benefiting both you and the physician you ve spent so much to recruit and hire. When managed and measured effectively, it can improve morale and retention. It also becomes a powerful driver for your bottom line.

5 Gauging Success Creating a results-based onboarding plan requires identifying a set of quantifiable metrics. They serve as measuring sticks that let you gauge success. Reviewing and recording these metrics can help you demonstrate the ROI for your onboarding process and improve your process for future use. Effectively measuring these metrics requires great attention to detail during the onboarding process. Your process needs consistent checkpoints and reviews of financial, marketing, and quality goals during a physician's employment. Finally, if a physician should decide to leave, conducting exit interviews will help you identify organizational obstacles or sources of dissatisfaction. You can then work to proactively address these issues when onboarding future new hires. ROI Leading vs. Lagging Metrics If every step in your onboarding process is an item in a checklist, that multi-part checklist can help you measure the initial success of your onboarding process. Measure not only the number of items, but the timeliness of completion. These become leading (or input oriented) metrics of the success of your process. Lagging (or output oriented) metrics like retention rate, ramp-up time, and referral count will help you measure the overall success of your onboarding process.

6 Managing Your Onboarding Process A comprehensive, results-based onboarding process can take months to complete, have hundreds of steps, and involve even more people. Marketware developed an onboarding tool that tracks the progress of this process, assigns tasks to the relevant parties, and helps measure ROI for your organization. The Marketware onboarding tool includes an interactive checklist with customizable templates based on the type of physician or practice you're onboarding. It can be used whether you have hired a new physician or are converting an existing group within your market to employment. The tool lets you implement the checklist, customize it, and then track your progress. It alerts others when they've been assigned tasks. It gives you progress reports you can share with your administrative team. It includes a volume assessment, which gives you the ability to open a specific checklist and measure the progress of a practice launch. We selected Marketware because it has an onboarding tool that creates a warehouse of details around onboarding new providers. It has helped to streamline physician outreach, referral development, and marketing intelligence. This enables everyone speak the same language, which translates into better ROI for the organization. Sean Duffy, Director of Physician Relations, Geisinger Health System You can share the reports and dashboards with your team to show progress and check the results of onboarding a single physician, a practice, or even view the statistics and progress for your entire enterprise. You can also share these reports with a physician to show how you're supporting their practice. Ready to Get Started? If you are considering development of an onboarding process for your organization and don't know where to start, we d love to help. We can also help you improve your existing process. Give us a call at or visit us at marketware.com and we can answer any questions you have or walk you through a 15 minute demo of our onboarding system.