Why Your Facility Should Consider Locums Staffing
As physician burnout increases nationwide – particularly in Emergency Medicine and Hospital Medicine, providers are leaning more towards a locum tenens (or locums) lifestyle and facilities that offer locums jobs. Let’s take a look at all the pros of locum tenens for both healthcare professionals and healthcare facilities.
What is Locum Tenens?
Locum Tenens is a Latin term meaning ‘one filling an office for a time or temporarily taking the place of another.’ For many years, the term ‘locum tenens physician’ received a negative connotation. It often referred to an ‘inferior’ or ‘bad’ physician. Now, as the landscape of healthcare changes, that is not the case. The number of locums providers is exponentially growing, making the recruitment of permanent physicians harder. With the increasing demand for medical professionals, 88% of hospitals across the country use locums staffing services on a regular basis. The healthcare staffing market as a whole is expected to reach over $31B by 2028.
Why is Locum Tenens Work So Attractive to Providers?
There are many reasons medical professionals are opting for locums jobs. We asked our providers why, and this is what they said:
Pay Rate: A recent study found that the average locum tenens pay for a full-time physician is $32.45 per hour more than a physician receiving a salary with a permanent job. A locum tenens provider can earn more by simply working weekends as opposed to working all year-round.
Autonomy and Flexibility: Working locums at your facility allows healthcare professionals to pick when and where they want to work, which is a huge motivator to fill your shifts. As far as when and how often locums providers work, the average full-time Emergency Medicine physician works 10-12 shifts per month. This leaves them with the ability to make as much or as little money as they desire while taking care of your patients.
Finding the Perfect Job: Providers fresh out of medical school are looking to find their place in the field. What better way to do so than working at multiple locations to find what is best for them before committing to a long-term position? If it is not a fit for either the provider or the client, the provider can move on to the next opportunity. Many providers use locums to find a place they like enough to work at permanently. This has occurred many times after we’ve placed a physician at one of our client’s sites.
Slowing Down: Even at the end of a provider’s career, locums work is attractive. As physicians reach the point where they are thinking about retirement, locum tenens is a great way to slow down while making a respectable income. Providers can choose to work less shifts as time goes by, or choose a slower healthcare facility to work PRN shifts.
Making an Impact: When a facility is utilizing locums staffing, it is not necessarily because they want to, but because they desperately need help covering shifts. Providers aspire to help others and make a big difference, and doing locums work allows them to get a true sense of self-worth. This became prominent during the pandemic when locums physicians were asked to travel across the country to treat the growing number of COVID-19 patients on short notice. Many of our providers were asked to hop on a flight within 24-48 hours, which required them to make several sacrifices. The sense of purpose became a strong motivator, and working locums helped fulfill that. Many of our providers express this same mentality working for our clients even after the pandemic.
Why Your Hospital Should Consider Locums Staffing
In today’s economy, hospital administrators are having to make frequent decisions about how to best run their hospital the most cost-effective and efficient way without sacrificing patient satisfaction. The locum tenens model does exactly that, and it is continuing to grow in popularity. Approximately 28 million surgeries in the United States were postponed in 2020 due to the pandemic. The demand for Anesthesiologists, CRNAs, Emergency Medicine physicians, and Hospitalists is dramatically increasing as we see hospitals and communities bounce back from the pandemic – especially in rural America. Hospitals, medical groups, and other facilities can all benefit from locum tenens, but it’s the work-life balance and overall lifestyle locums provides that attracts medical professionals to work at America’s hospitals.
Western Healthcare is proud to offer locum tenens staffing to healthcare facilities and will continue to deliver the same quality providers that we have the last 14 years in business. We take pride in keeping hospitals staffed to ensure Americans get the health care they need, and being a part of the solution to the national provider shortage.
Learn more about our temporary placement services here.
