America’s ongoing and progressively growing shortage of medical professionals is taking a significant toll on healthcare facilities. It’s placing heavier workloads on their existing staff members, leading to excessive stress, exhaustion, and increased burnout rates. That, in turn, is causing many qualified professionals to leave the medical field altogether and further exacerbating the shortage. On top of that, it’s placing a great deal of financial strain on medical facilities, leading to longer wait times for patients, and negatively affecting patient satisfaction ratings among other issues.
Locum tenens providers play a key role in mitigating those impacts. They allow medical facilities to give their permanent staff members time off when they need it. They also cover staffing gaps until healthcare facilities can find permanent team members. Additionally, they help medical facilities to provide the care their patients need and maintain their quality of care. Those are only a few of the benefits locum tenens providers can bring to the table. With the right measures, healthcare facilities can more effectively leverage locum tenens providers to solve their staffing deficits.
Implementing Staffing Software
One way medical facilities can solve their staffing shortages is by implementing software for locum tenens staffing. Software that’s specifically designed for this purpose can help facilities with posting jobs, recruiting, credentialing, scheduling interviews, and onboarding. It can also aid in managing contracts and monitoring performance. Staffing software can help facilities ensure they have enough staff members on hand during each shift to cover their patient volumes as well.
Those are only a few of the ways staffing software can streamline the process of finding and managing locum tenens providers.
Working With Staffing Agencies
Healthcare staffing agencies can be a major boon for medical facilities as well. They have broad databases of professionals to draw from, and those candidates have diverse qualifications and skill sets. That increases the likelihood of finding candidates who can fully meet facilities’ needs and expectations. Beyond that, their locum tenens providers are ready to go to work at a moment’s notice, so they can fill openings quickly and efficiently. Staffing agencies also provide a variety of services beyond recruiting, including credentialing, onboarding, and performance tracking.
Creating an Efficient Onboarding Process
Another way to maximize the benefits of hiring locum tenens providers is to create an efficient onboarding process. It’s important to create standardized orientation processes and materials for newcomers and provide quick reference guides that cover specific protocols and other crucial points. Setting up IT access and EMR training in advance is likewise essential.
Those measures can help your locum tenens providers more seamlessly adapt to their roles and incorporate themselves into your team while also improving their overall performance.
Making the Most of the Benefits Locum Tenens Providers Have to Offer
More than 80 percent of medical facilities are hiring locum tenens providers to cover permanent team members’ absences and fill staffing gaps, and that number is expected to grow moving forward. They can help to create a more balanced workload and aid in improving the level of care medical facilities are able to provide for their patients. They also give medical facilities more flexibility in scheduling and enable them to better adapt to fluctuating patient volumes along with other advantages. Using the measures mentioned here can help medical facilities to make the most of those benefits.