Sutter Health is refining its physician onboarding process to better support clinicians entering roles across its expanding network of ambulatory sites.
Over the past two years, the Sacramento, Calif.-based system has hired 2,000 clinicians as part of a broader effort to expand access to care across Northern California. In 2025 alone, the system has opened 17 new ambulatory care sites and plans to open several more.
“Most of my time right now has been spent around how do we get these new sites open; how do we make sure they’re staffed appropriately?” Todd Smith, MD, senior vice president and chief physician executive at the system, said during an upcoming episode of the “Becker’s Clinical Leadership Podcast.”
Onboarding hundreds of new physicians is no small feat, with a smooth onboarding process essential to ensure new sites open on time and can begin caring for patients, he said.
“With eight different medical groups across 26 counties in Northern California, you can imagine there’s a lot of variation that can occur in that process,” Dr. Smith said.
With wide variation in how physician onboarding is approached across healthcare organizations, a well-structured and consistent process can serve as a meaningful differentiator in a system’s workforce strategy. Research has shown that the quality of a physician’s onboarding experience is a key predictor of job satisfaction, underscoring its long-term effect on retention and engagement.
At Sutter, each medical group partners closely with the health system’s physician services and operations teams to coordinate an onboarding process that begins before day one. That includes account setup, schedule creation and efforts to foster a sense of belonging from the outset.
There are two main pieces to orientation: one for physicians to acclimate within the medical group, and another to familiarize them with the broader health system, Dr. Smith said.
“It’s an ongoing process that is jointly owned by the medical groups themselves, who are the hiring entity here in California, as well as our foundation counterparts to provide that support for them,” Dr. Smith said.
Onboarding should be a journey, he said.
“It doesn’t start the day they start and it doesn’t stop the day they start,” Dr. Smith said.
