When NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP) wanted to formalize and enhance its Revenue Cycle Academy (RCA), it added a new onboarding program. The RCA focuses on training and development initiatives for employees who directly impact NYP’s revenue stream, including those who record insurance information and collect co-payments. The onboarding program provides a systematic, comprehensive approach, enabling staff to become more familiar and confident with business concepts, processes, technology, and behaviors.
The program aims to: minimize the time it takes for an employee to reach full productivity; make employees feel comfortable and assured with their job responsibilities; help employees identify with the overall revenue cycle processes, departments, and various job responsibilities; and appropriately set performance expectations.
Here is how the program works:
- In building the program, NYP considered the learner, the many situations encountered, and the skills required to master daily routines. Five categories of training were identified: process, behavior, technology, hospital policies, and government/private industry requirements.
- To meet the needs of both incumbent and newly hired staff, the training courses previously provided were evaluated, the gaps identified, and two programs were structured using the same content elements.
- Employees are provided with general orientation, blended learning sessions, on-the-job training, assessments, site visits, and an experiential learning map. The blended learning sessions consist of a five-day program including discussion of key concepts, online process-based courses with activities and assessments, hands-on technology instruction/practice, and role-playing. For the on-the-job component, learners and their assigned mentors complete a daily checklist. At the end of 90 days, employees attend the learning map session to mark their graduation.
- Incumbent employees are required to take six of 27 available courses over 12 months. They also are encouraged to attend a related classroom-based technology course offered monthly. Managers reinforce the learning by discussing the program in their monthly team meetings and are provided with dashboard reports to ensure ongoing progress with participants’ training assignments.
- To date, more than 900 employees have completed the program, with an average score of 95 percent on their post assessments. There has been a decrease in the learning curve, fewer retraining sessions, and an increase in positive attitude among employees and managers.
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