Optimizing Your Locum Tenens Strategy: How to Find The Right Fit

Bringing in locum tenens providers to fill temporary staffing needs can be beneficial for medical facilities in many ways. For one, locum tenens providers bridge staffing gaps to ensure healthcare facilities are always able to meet their patients’ needs. Secondly, they help facilities meet the needs of their permanent staff members. By filling in for team members, they allow them to take medical or maternity leaves, go on vacation, spend time with their families, and take care of other personal matters. Those are only a few of the advantages locum tenens bring to the table. 

To fully benefit from those advantages, though, medical facilities need to find the right providers to meet their distinct needs. That entails optimizing their locum tenens strategies. The following points can go a long way toward helping healthcare facilities make the most of the services locum tenens offer and finding the best candidates to supplement their permanent teams. 

Use a VMS Platform

One of the ways for hospitals, clinics, and other facilities to optimize their locum tenens strategies is to use a VMS platform. These systems provide extensive help with locum tenens staffing. They give users access to a broad range of medical professionals who stand ready to fill their temporary staffing needs. They also assist with matching candidates’ qualifications to job requirements, credentialing, and a long list of other factors. They simplify the locum tenens process so users can more quickly, easily, and effectively fill their staffing gaps. 

Work With Staffing Agencies

Another key measure here is to work with healthcare staffing agencies. Each one has its own database of professionals with different experience levels, specializations, licensing, and other qualifications. VMSs give healthcare facilities access to multiple staffing agencies from a single platform. That makes managing prospects and providers much simpler and more effective. Along the way, try to build relationships with various agencies, especially the ones that provide the best results. It’s possible to measure those results using the reporting and analytics capabilities built into VMS platforms. 

Keep Past Locum Tenens Providers in Mind

Additionally, for medical facilities that have worked with locums in the past and seen impressive performance from them, it’s important to keep them in mind for future assignments. They already understand the systems, processes, and protocols used in their past assignments. They may have also kept in touch with past coworkers. Those aspects help them to incorporate themselves back into facilities’ workforces more quickly and productively. 

Create an Effective Onboarding Process

Healthcare facilities’ onboarding processes can make a significant difference in how well new team members adjust to their procedures and routines as well. It’s important to create thorough but concise onboarding techniques. Consider presenting them to newcomers in stages rather than all at once. This is another area in which VMS platforms can help. They aid in streamlining users’ onboarding processes and ensuring all the important points are covered from introductions to granting privileges and beyond. 

Making the Most of Your Locum Tenens Strategy

Locum tenens providers can be immensely helpful for healthcare facilities. Still, different providers have varying skills, training, and job expectations. Not all of them are perfect fits for all medical facilities and positions. With the points mentioned here, medical facilities can optimize their locum tenens strategies and more effectively find the right candidates to meet their needs.