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How to onboard a new physician: What does hospital orientation consist of? How long is orientation at a hospital? How much does physician onboarding cost?
The challenges of onboarding new doctors and advice for physician onboarding training with Susan Slaughter, director of physician relations and practice development at Hattiesburg Clinic. AMA Chief Experience Officer Todd Unger hosts.
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Speaker
- Susan Slaughter, director of physician relations and practice development, Hattiesburg Clinic
Transcript
Slaughter: We want our physicians, first and foremost, to focus on patient care and allow our resources and our services to manage the business and the development aspects of their practice.
Unger: Hello, and welcome to the AMA Update video and podcast. Today we're talking about how to set up new physicians for success at your organization and why onboarding is so important. Our guest today is Susan Slaughter, director of physician relations and practice development at Hattiesburg Clinic in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I'm Todd Unger, AMA's chief experience officer in Chicago. Susan, it's a pleasure to have you with us today.
Slaughter: Thank you, Todd. I appreciate the invitation.
Unger: Well, I'm really eager to hear more about onboarding. As a person who's responsible for membership here at the AMA, I can tell you firsthand how important that is here. Hattiesburg is somewhat of a leader in this space with your Onboarding Academy program. I'd love it if you could just start by giving us a brief introduction into the program and why you created it.
Slaughter: Absolutely. The onboarding of new physicians is, in my opinion, one of the most important functions of any health care organization. And at Hattiesburg clinic, we place a lot of value on welcoming our new physicians and engaging them early. And so we created the new physician onboarding program. It's new to the clinic, and it's designed specifically to help our newest physicians successfully transition into their practice. And it's a platform that helps us educate physicians about our clinic and align them with our organization's culture, resulting in what we believe was a successful practice in high provider satisfaction.
Unger: Well, thank you for that overview, Susan. I am very curious about what's involved in the Onboarding Academy. What are some of the specific topics that it covers? And how have those things made a difference to those who have gone through the program?
Slaughter: The Onboarding Academy is actually one of several components of our onboarding program. The academy itself is a class, so to speak. It's a platform that helps us introduce our physicians to content that we think is important for them in their practice development.
And we place them in this class together as a new community of physicians right from the beginning. Once they join the clinic, we engage them in the class, whether they're joining us straight out of training or they're coming to us from a practice where they've been for several years. And the topics presented include business operations, development.
And we want our physicians, first and foremost, to focus on patient care and allow our resources and our services to manage the business and the development aspects of their practice. And the intent of the education is full transparency and to engage our physicians in the how and the why of how our clinic functions.
So the topics include—we kick off the session, the very first session in August, with a session that includes introductions to each other and to the board of directors. And we have a speaker who speaks on physician resiliency and burnout, which I think is a really great topic to kick off the academy with because joining a new clinic and a new community and having to learn sometimes a new EMR can be very stressful. And we want them to know that we're here to support them.
Other topics include value-based care and our journey to value-based care, cost and quality, and what that means for their practice, risk management, the compensation model, which is presented by our chief financial officer, the revenue cycle and payer contracting. So that our physicians understand from the moment they drop a charge, what is the lifespan and the life cycle of a claim? And how do they get paid?
And then we also review our marketing and communications. Our team comes in and does a great presentation on how we introduce them as physicians to the community and why branding is important and what communications means to our clinic. And we also review physician policies, corporate compliance.
And our final session, because the academy lasts for 10 months, is on becoming a shareholder because our clinic is owned by our physicians. And after year one, they have that opportunity to be a shareholder. And we celebrate after that last session with the graduation dinner, where their spouse and guests are invited to join the board of directors to celebrate the end of the Academy.
Unger: Well, that's quite a program, and I love the owner mentality. And I like your focus on branding and marketing and how that gets delivered every day. I'm curious, now that you've had this program in place for a few years, what results are you seeing? Describe to me the before and after of what you're seeing now as you've implemented this.
Slaughter: Sure. We feel the results have been very positive. First of all, our physicians are immediately connected with a new community of physicians that are just like they are.
They're in a new community. They're in a new medical setting. And they're instantly sharing patients, so that's obviously very positive.
And then, second, the new physicians are engaged sooner than later in becoming a part of the medical community. And they learn, after becoming a shareholder, how to get involved in committees, which can lead to leadership roles and possibly even board positions. And that always results in loyalty and commitment to our organization.
And then finally, the new class understands how decisions are made in the clinic. So when we're connecting our physicians with the how and the why of the clinic operations early on while they're focusing on patient care, we believe that that results in increased provider satisfaction and higher retention.
And we also do a Survey Monkey, post-Survey Monkey survey, after every session just to ask our physicians, how did we do? And was this topic helpful to you? We get really great feedback from that.
Unger: Do you have any specific sense of how it's improved satisfaction and retention, which are so important?
Slaughter: What I have found in the feedback that we have received from those who have gone through the class is that they feel more confident in their practice and that they can focus on patient care, which is why they went to medical school and why they went through years of training, and that they have a support team behind them who can manage the day to day operations and all of the support systems and resources that they need. So it's an ease of practice situation, and that's always going to result in high physician satisfaction rankings.
Unger: That is exactly what we hear from physicians every day, which is just want to focus on patient care and seeing those results and people get better. So it's very encouraging to hear about your program. And you mentioned the topic of leadership in the context of them becoming leaders. But it's obviously that the leadership of Hattiesburg is very critical in the onboarding process. How can organizations make the case to leadership to invest in a program like the onboarding one that you've designed?
Slaughter: That's a great question. Engagement and buy in from top leadership, especially physician leadership, is key to successfully implementing an onboarding program like this or an academy. Hiring a physician costs a practice between $250,000 and sometimes up to $1 million in fees, if you encompass the cost associated with recruitment fees, relocation fees, sign-on bonuses, other costs associated with onboarding of a new doctor, not to mention lost revenue and the lack of access to care that those patients are dealing with once you do lose a provider. So all of these are valid points to make to leadership if someone is trying to offer the program and what the commitment can make to an organization and to a practice.
Unger: Well, you made the case very well for why an organization should be looking into something like that. And I'm curious if you have any advice for those out there that are trying to start an onboarding program or expand their current one. What would you tell them?
Slaughter: I would advise them to start by speaking with their early careers physicians, those physicians that have joined their clinic in the last, say, two to five years—this is something we did—and ask them, what is it that you know now that you wish you knew in the first or second year of your practice here? And build on those topics.
I would also encourage leadership to speak to practice managers and other practice directors. Ask them what the topics they think our physicians need to know and understand better because the physicians are asking them daily questions. And they know what they don't understand, what they might need help with.
And then I would plan, plan, plan, schedule everything early in advance as possible because you are wanting to access your physicians' schedule. And they're seeing patients all day, so you want to make sure that you have events and dates on their calendar as soon as possible. And then check in with your physicians on a regular basis.
Give them data about the practice. Let them know what the trends are for their practice. Educate them about what their goals are and what they want those goals to look like, and help them meet those goals. That is done by meeting with your physicians regularly to ask for their feedback.
Unger: You're literally enrolling them in so many ways there. It's really helpful to hear that. I'm curious, when you look ahead at the year coming, what do you see as far as your own program's evolution? What's going to change?
Slaughter: Yeah, some of the items that I would like to see us expand on in the future in our onboarding program are to bring back some of those new physicians that now are in year three or four of their practice that have already gone through the academy and maybe come back and participate in some of the sessions, whether they're speaking or just engaging with the new class about, oh wow, this is why this was so important for me to know then and not later.
I think adding mentor opportunities could be a really good place for our new physicians to engage with those who have been here for a few years, and possibly even offering an opportunity for our physicians that have been here for 10, 20 years to come back and participate in classes that they've never had the opportunity to be a part of the academy. And I will add this, related to all the questions you've asked, is that Dr. Bryan Batson, our CEO, attends every onboarding academy class.
And there is so much value in that because he's able to interject and say, this is what happened to me. This is what I learned from this. This is how I manage the situation. And I find that experience with him being in the room just priceless and very valuable.
Unger: And we've had a chance to talk with Dr. Batson on the program before, and I'll tell you, just more great ideas coming out of Hattiesburg all the time. Susan, thank you so much for joining us today and telling us more about your Onboarding Academy.
Folks out there, if you're a physician and you found this discussion valuable, you could support more programming like it by becoming an AMA member at ama-assn.org/join. That wraps up today's episode, and we'll be back with another AMA Update soon.
Be sure to subscribe for new episodes and find all our videos and podcasts at ama-assn.org/podcasts. Thanks for joining us today. Please take care.
Disclaimer: The viewpoints expressed in this video are those of the participants and/or do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the AMA.
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