3 Steps to Evaluating Your Physician Onboarding Program

It sounds simple but at the end of an onboarding marathon many teams forget to ask this question or avoid it all together, nervous of what the response might be. Make 2 columns then put a time limit of 10 minutes to this exercise. Ask your team and others who participate in the onboarding process to do the same.  

From an external perspective, how did your newly onboarded providers rate their onboarding experience? If you aren’t getting their feedback, consider creating a simple survey, or 2, to implement next year. Make sure that you’re asking questions that are clear, concise, and actionable. If you are already getting provider feedback-look for trends. Don’t be afraid to reach out to get specifics around how you can improve the process to better meet or exceed their expectations. Many providers are happy to provide feedback for process improvement to better support them and their future colleagues.

Is internal or external communication a barrier? Do you have a good tracking system, a single source of truth? Or maybe you have the basics but now it’s time to build out the post boarding, mentorship, retention or even offboarding portion of your process.

Since onboarding is a team sport, make sure to involve all key stakeholders in communications to create a shared vision. This is the perfect time to let your inner storyteller out, outline the “why” and the impact (financial, time, engagement, etc.) that changes could have system wide.

Next, set a timeline for planning, follow up discussions and implementation.  

Lastly, If there were additional items shared during your focus/feedback session(s) that didn’t make it into the top 3 this time, save them to your calendar to revisit in 3-6 months.  

As we all know, a lot has changed over the last 24 months, make sure that your physician recruitment, hiring, and onboarding practices are ready to help you attract and retain the best.