Your healthcare organization has finally found the right provider to hire in a difficult-to-staff subspecialty. But she’s being heavily recruited elsewhere and verbally committed but has not signed yet.
Does your CVO or medical staff services department have this provider on their radar—and if so, do you greenlight primary source verification? Or do you wait and risk delaying the time from hire to patient care delivery? Is it wasting money to begin credentialing before the contract is signed, or a smart investment that saves time? Most of all, is it compliant to do so?
The competition for qualified providers forces health systems to grapple with such questions and to correct any misalignment among the many individuals and departments responsible for onboarding—a process that directly affects patient and provider satisfaction and compliance. As for revenue? The latest estimates pin job turnover in the primary care physician workforce as a sieve costing $979 million in annual excess healthcare costs across the U.S. population
The competition for providers isn’t abating, but connecting the disparate technologies your health system uses for onboarding and provider data management can give you a leg up by giving providers and patients a better experience from the first touch.
Three reasons to improve onboarding for the benefit of providers and patients
First, a slow, uncoordinated onboarding process leaves a less-than-desirable first impression that could negatively affect providers’ loyalty. Industry experts have said it can cost organizations as much as $1.2 million to lose even one provider. Efficient onboarding gives new hires confidence that they’ve made the right decision in joining your organization. There’s also the paper burden we heap on providers. Some administration in provider data management is inevitable, but it needn’t be disconnected or manual. Make the onboarding process easier for providers by eliminating duplicative application tasks to notch early satisfaction among them.
Second, due to factors like higher premiums, patients are increasingly calling the shots in healthcare. They want instant, safe, easily accessible care in a post-COVID-19 world. Patients can’t see behind the curtain to recognize that your organization has an efficient provider onboarding process, but they’ll benefit from being seen faster by qualified, highly rated providers. Giving patients access to a robust pool of clinicians via a comprehensive and up-to-date directory is also a way to use your provider data to boost patient satisfaction, especially when access to care remains strained in many areas of the country. As healthcare consumerization grows, organizations that quickly onboard new hires to meet patients’ needs will be the most successful as they become known for providing timely care and solidify their position as a common referral partner for physicians.
Third, providers’ ability to generate revenue requires expediency from contract to care provision. The average physician generates $2.4 million annually for their affiliated hospital. When providers are idle and unable to see patients—especially early in the hiring period where privileging or payer enrollment drags on—organizations lose money because they now have a novel cost (i.e., the new hire’s salary) for which there is no offset in revenue.
Consider these tips to honor patients and providers as you accelerate your provider onboarding process:
- Give the individuals and teams involved in onboarding the technology to collaborate, preserving resources and enabling new providers to see patients faster.
- Digitally gather and store credentialing data and documents using automation, including checks for expired or suspended medical licenses, NPDB, DEA, SAM, and more.
- Connect provider data to a provider directory software program to give patients and patient-access teams best-in-class provider search and scheduling capabilities.
- Centralize data to eliminate provider frustration when multiple departments request the same data and end the practice of entering the same provider data twice.
- Inform all proper channels that a new provider is joining the organization: medical staff, hospital staff, referral groups, partners, and any other contract groups.
- Conduct a post-onboarding process survey. Ask those who just experienced your organization’s onboarding process: What did we do well and what must improve?
Provider onboarding is a complex process that must be accomplished expertly, without overlooking any steps. Creating a formal, centralized workflow is critical because it ensures that only the most qualified providers join your organization and simultaneously promotes a provider’s ability to see patients as soon as possible after hiring. By shortening an otherwise lengthy process and optimizing provider data management, healthcare organizations can focus on high-quality patient care and revenue generation.
Explore symplr’s provider data management solutions that improve onboarding and more.