How does your practice welcome a new physician? Too often, I find new physicians are “baptized by fire,” immediately thrown into a busy practice after just a couple of days of “orientation.” They are provided policies and procedures, but do they have an opportunity to learn and embrace the culture of your practice? Do they fully understand expectations and accountability? Have you engaged them in practice marketing? Have you provided them the tools to market and grow their practice?
Here are a few tips to improve the on-boarding process:
1. Ensure adequate introductions to your practice, including other physicians and staff. Share the new physician’s bio/background with all before he or she even arrives. Encourage key staff and physician partners to invite the new physician for coffee or lunch the first couple of weeks to begin to build relationships.
2. If your practice is a large group, consider provide each new physician a mentor physician within the practice to help serve as a resource and sounding board.
3. Ensure all marketing tools and collateral are updated prior to the physician’s first day, including your Web site, any printed materials, etc.
4. Provide the new physician basic marketing tools on day one to begin to build their practice — business cards, bio rack cards, note cards, etc.
5. Introduce the new physician to your patients. Personal introductions are best but can also be enhanced by a letter to all patients prior to the new physician’s arrival and posts on your social media as well as flyers and a welcome poster within the office.
6. Help introduce the new physician to the local community. Find someone within your office who can go with the new physician and make visits to neighboring physicians, offices/businesses, pharmacies, realtors, etc.
7. Rather than waiting for an annual review, hold quarterly evaluation sessions. This allows both practice management and the new physician to touch base and determine what it going well and what could be improved. It provides an open forum to ask questions and learn and allows an opportunity to course correct if necessary.