How Mentoring Programs Can Enhance Performance in Healthcare

April 1, 2021
April 1, 2021

New healthcare employees greatly benefit from spending time with their counterparts who’ve been on the job a while. Having a go-to person for questions and problems eases their onboarding significantly. That said, care must be taken to ensure that the mentor’s skill set is in line with expected performance metrics.

Use a Structured Process to Determine Mentor Candidates

“Mentoring can tie into everything from an orientation plan onward for career development,” explains Beth Ottinger, RN, BSN, CPC, CCS, an AHIMA-Approved ICD-10-CM/ PCS Trainer and Vice President, Product Management Education with nThrive. “But you don’t want to sit them down with someone who’s been there 30 years if you’re unsure of what that person’s skills are. A good way around that is to have employees trained all at once periodically, even if they have been there a long time, so you can assess the levels of knowledge. That helps you decide who should be a mentor, and who should be going back for some additional coursework to shore up problem areas.”

Assessments Can Help Direct your Efforts

She adds, “If you’ve got your base group assessed, that can help a new manager who’s coming in, because he or she can quickly figure out who’s the cream of the crop and who needs to have some time devoted to helping them improve. Assessments do a great deal to not just build a program for mentors and mentees, but also provide a snapshot of where a department, such as revenue cycle, is at any current moment.”

This blog post excerpts the HealthStream article Growth Potential: Career Pathways Offering Mentorship and Education Can Engage and Motivate Revenue Cycle Staff. Other content about enhancing and protecting the revenue cycle workforce includes:

  • Create a multifaceted path around retention
  • Turnover and retention challenges among healthcare revenue cycle staff
  • Certifications, badges also have strong appeal
  • Pre-employment testing protects employer investment

Download the full article.