The process of integrating and welcoming new hires into an organization's culture and procedures is known as employee onboarding. Onboarding issues within the healthcare sector include time-consuming workflows, regulatory requirements, and limited ability to provide trained medical staff in the field in an emergency. This is where medical facilities can utilize healthcare onboarding software.
This guide covers essential features, benefits, the selection process, and the market landscape for healthcare onboarding systems. Moreover, this guide will aid you in making an informed decision.
Let’s begin!
Healthcare onboarding platforms are designed to simplify medical employee onboarding workflows. Healthcare practices benefit from acquainting new hires with their teams, giving them a rundown of their responsibilities, and ensuring they receive ongoing training to handle a variety of scenarios.
These technologies give HR departments the ability to build onboarding checklists, send offer letters, store crucial documents, monitor employee progress, and offer a centralized communication platform.
Core Functionalities Of A Healthcare Onboarding Software
Whether you’re dealing with an onboarding module within a larger HCM system or an independent module, there are a few features that will streamline onboarding for your team:
Automated Document Management
Many healthcare onboarding software solutions allow users to securely store and manage critical documents such as medical licenses, DEA certificates, background checks, malpractice insurance, etc. They also provide automation for document collection and data entry, helping them get rid of any manual filing errors.
Electronic Signatures
With electronic signatures (sometimes called e-signatures), organizations can approve forms faster and speed up the onboarding process. They can be used to authorize medical documents such as HIPAA compliance documents and credentialing forms. E-signatures also reduce paper waste and provide a readily available audit trail for all documents.
Compliance Management
Healthcare organizations often have to comply with federal and state regulations, including HIPAA and OSHA standards. Onboarding solutions can ensure compliance by providing notifications for any healthcare protocol updates. They can also provide built-in checklists and training modules that are up-to-date and compliant with the latest regulation changes.
Credentials And License Tracking
This feature allows organizations to automatically monitor expiration dates, renewal deadlines, and any compliance requirements for professional licenses. This reduces the risk of hiring unlicensed personnel and helps avoid any penalties for not complying with any labor requirements.
AI Automated Training
One recent feature that’s being implemented in many sectors is AI. While it has a lot of broad applications, onboarding software can primarily use AI to create customized training plans that address skill gaps in new hires. These training plans can also cater to a wide variety of topics such as crisis management, patient communication, or procedural skills.
Integration Capabilities
Onboarding software can often connect with other HR systems such as HRIS, payroll, scheduling, and Learning Management Systems (LMS). They even integrate with medical software such as Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Smooth integration not only facilitates an efficient flow of data (such as employee data) towards other HR systems, but also reduces data duplication, making it a crucial feature to have for any HR software.
Here are the top benefits of an onboarding tool for healthcare industry providers:
Reduced Administrative Burdens
Healthcare organizations need to focus more on providing better patient care. Having onboarding tools helps them save time to welcome new hires and pay more attention to their patients.
Enhanced Compliance Adherence
As the healthcare industry is compliance-heavy, these solutions help practices in maintaining assurance to various labor regulations in the healthcare sector, such as HIPAA, OSHA, and others. Automated compliance adherence makes the overall process stress-free and efficient for healthcare providers.
Advanced Reporting And Insights
Onboarding systems aid users in tracking and monitoring the progress of employees in real-time. Also, these tools enable healthcare organizations to send back and forth emails to new hires and help users to track their workforce’s onboarding statuses in real-time. Providers can also generate reports on their onboarding efficiencies, such as time-to-onboard, completion rates, and more.
Consistent Onboarding Experience
A standardized onboarding process allows medical practices to incorporate unified medical training and integration procedures across all departments and locations. This ensures that every new employee receives equal information and support.
Choosing the right onboarding software for healthcare organizations involves considering the following:
Specific Operational Requirements
Look for tools that fulfill your organization-specific requirements, such as the size of the workforce, number of locations, scale of the practice’s overall operations, and more.
User-Friendly Interface And Training Support
Identify a system that provides an easy-to-navigate interface for your staff. Also, ensure that the platform offers advanced training material and support that enables you to work with it without challenges or hiccups.
Room For Scalability
Healthcare practices experience growth of overall operations, for which they require more staff members. Select an onboarding system that provides you with the flexibility of scaling as you need to onboard more employees.
Third-Party Integration Abilities
Go for an onboarding application that helps you connect with a wide variety of external applications, such as scheduling, accounting, and EHR solutions, for a smooth flow of operations.
Healthcare onboarding software is becoming increasingly popular as providers try to lower expensive turnover, guarantee compliance, and expedite staff integration. Demand for structured, software-enabled processes is fueled by the need to document orientation and training prior to the start of patient care due to strict Joint Commission and CMS requirements.
At the same time, hospitals are compelled to invest in onboarding systems that enhance retention and speed competency due to the high cost of nurse turnover, which averages $61,110 per registered nurse. Digital onboarding solutions are also becoming an essential investment for health systems around the world due to the increasing complexity of healthcare teams and the requirement for constant workforce readiness.
What Real Users Say About Healthcare Onboarding Software?
Healthcare teams often point out how much smoother the process feels with onboarding software in place. Managers can stay involved at the right points, and the required paperwork is easier to keep organized, which takes a lot of stress out of the first days. Many also appreciate the time saved through automation, especially when several new staff members are joining at once. Although some mention that some applicant tracking tools do not always connect perfectly with healthcare onboarding systems, the efficiency and structure these platforms bring generally outweigh that drawback.
With the intention of making the onboarding process and streamlining other HR functionalities easier, these software solutions are now of high importance in the healthcare industry. They allow for automation of repetitive tasks, thereby lessening the burden and time spent on these healthcare processes. These solutions also provide connectors with the other already existing systems. Given the onboarding challenges, a well-tailored solution can go a long way in addressing meeting compliance and streamlining onboarding and training processes for new employees. It can also enhance patient service, thereby improving the overall operational efficiency and competitiveness of the organization.
Ready to improve the welcome experience for new hires? Discover the top healthcare onboarding software now and find your ideal fit!