Most health care organizations live and die by the productivity of their physicians. Still, many are slow to adopt a fundamental process that boosts physician satisfaction, according to new research.
A report published by the Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment compiled data from a survey it conducted in collaboration with Jackson Physician Search and LocumTenens.com to identify onboarding activity and whether it contributed to the job satisfaction of physicians and other health professionals.
Among physicians and other health professionals who had had a positive onboarding experience, 56% reported they were highly satisfied with their jobs, compared with just 19% of those who had had a negative onboarding experience. In addition, just 2% of those who had had a positive onboarding experience said they were dissatisfied with their jobs, compared with 12% of those who had had a negative one.
“It doesn't surprise me at all that more robust onboarding leads to higher job satisfaction,” said Rebecca W. Lauderdale, MD, an internist and a physician well-being champion at Hattiesburg Clinic, a physician-owned and physician-governed multispecialty practice in South Mississippi.
Hattiesburg Clinic is a member of the AMA Health System Program, which provides enterprise solutions to equip leadership, physicians and care teams with resources to help drive the future of medicine.
“What does surprise me is how many organizations have a very short onboarding process or no process at all,” said Dr. Lauderdale.
About 40% of respondents reported that their onboarding process ran from three months to a year or more, but another 40% said theirs ended within a month.
Hattiesburg Clinic launched its Onboarding Academy, a one-year program featuring monthly meetings for new physicians, in 2020.
“There's so much opportunity to improve physicians’ well-being and job satisfaction and to cut the cost of turnover by just giving some thought to how we onboard new people,” Dr. Lauderdale said.
It’s essential, yet staffing lags
“A formal onboarding process is a significant factor in determining satisfaction levels among medical professionals,” the report says. “Seventy-three percent of physicians and clinicians who reported satisfaction with their onboarding had undergone a formal process, compared to only 34% of those who were dissatisfied.”
Still, according to the report, just 11.3% of health care organizations have at least one recruitment professional who is specifically charged with onboarding.
Around the same time that Hattiesburg Clinic started its Onboarding Academy, it created a new full-time position, the director of physician relations and practice development.
“This really couldn't have happened without having a person dedicated to making sure it all works,” Dr. Lauderdale said.
Tips for implementation
Robust onboarding is worth the investment. “This is going to save you money,” Dr. Lauderdale said.
But many organizations may wonder where to start when implementing an onboarding program, so she offered a few tips.
“For starters, again, there needs to be somebody whose got the ball—somebody whose job it is to coordinate everything and who understands the importance of it,” she said.
You also really need buy-in from your upper leadership.
“You have to get an hour or an hour-and-a-half presentation from each of the key people in your organization,” she said, adding that you should come up with a list of the most important topics that your new people need to understand, then find the best people to speak to those topics. If you encounter any resistance from members of the C-suite, “Make the case that this will save them time eventually.”
Hattiesburg Clinic’s onboarding program runs year-round, so new physicians simply jump in whenever they’re hired. This shared experience helps with communication and also cohesion.
“They feel some camaraderie, even though they're often from a variety of specialties,” Dr. Lauderdale said. “There might be a surgeon and a primary care physician and a nephrologist, but they learn to feel comfortable communicating with each other. This helps patient care.”
It also boosts practice efficiency, she noted.
“It's understood from the beginning that this is just part of what you do when you join, so very rarely do people miss these sessions,” she said. “This is just good, bottom-line business sense.”
