5 Ways to Measure Locum Tenens Staff Performance
Locum tenens staff performance directly impacts patient care quality, operational efficiency, and cost management of healthcare facilities.
Organizations risk inconsistent service and high turnover rates without effective methods for measuring their performance, especially now when the locum tenens staffing market is expected to reach almost 20 billion dollars by 2034.
But what exactly is locum tenens, and why is it essential that we track their performance? In this article, we explore the meaning of this profession, why it matters, and five proven strategies to assess locum tenens effectiveness.
What Is Locum Tenens?
Locum tenens is actually a Latin phrase meaning "to hold the place of.” However, in the healthcare systems, it is a solution that addresses temporary staffing shortages.
It requires hiring healthcare professionals, such as physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants, to fill in for absent or departing providers on a short-term or long-term basis.
Why Locum Tenens Matter in The Healthcare System?
The healthcare industry, especially in the United States, faces persistent staffing challenges, and with patient demand on the rise, it’s difficult to always have someone to cover for full-time employees.
In addition to the staff shortage, burnout is real in the medical field; permanent employees can’t fulfill the vital roles of care providers, their performance is down, and Locum Tenens provides some aid to the high stress the medical staff is constantly on.
Benefits Of Locum Tenens
Other benefits of locum tenens include:
Maintains quality of care
Addresses workforce shortages
Flexibility
Specialized expertise
Reduced administrative burden
A study by Barton Associates surveyed 280 locum tenens providers to uncover their top reasons for pursuing this type of work:
Flexibility (37%): The majority of nurse practitioners and other providers highlighted flexibility as the primary reason for choosing locum work. It offers the freedom to avoid burnout and create time for what matters most, with assignments and contracts tailored to your needs.
Higher earning potential (17%): Locum providers often earn significantly more than their permanent counterparts. For instance, locum nurse practitioners can earn up to 80% more, depending on their specialty and state.
Ability to travel (15%): Many providers are drawn to locum work for the opportunity to travel while saving money. With travel expenses covered by the locum tenens agency, it’s a cost-effective way to explore new places.
The Challenges of Locum Tenens' Performance Today
There are many challenges when it comes to staffing locum tenens in hospitals and healthcare facilities.
While costs are one of the main issues at 88%, the lack of familiarity ranks second at 75%. 67% of respondents also show concerns regarding the quality of patient care and job performance. Continuity of patient care raises concerns for 65% of respondents.
The last one on the list is the lack of familiarity with equipment and procedures, cited by 43% of respondents.
Why are these concerns important? And why measuring performance is the solution?
The Importance of Performance Metrics
We have established the benefit of Locum Tenens healthcare professionals and that they are essential to provide aid to other medical professionals and to cover the rising demand of patients; however, just covering shifts isn't enough.
Locum tenens need to do a good job of keeping up with patient service demands and not just seeing their job as temporary assignments. These professionals need to be advanced practice providers as real full-time doctors.
That’s where locum tenens staff performance measuring comes into place. These methods offer actionable insights into staff productivity, patient outcomes, and overall alignment with organizational goals.
Healthcare leaders can make informed decisions, optimize staffing, and ensure high-quality patient care by implementing these approaches.
Read on to discover whether locum tenens staff is the right model for you or not.
5 Ways to Measure Locum Tenens Staff Performance
To provide high-quality services, medical professionals and advanced practitioners need to invest in better staffing solutions to care for patients in a more humane way.
1) Ask Healthcare Professionals: Reviews and Feedback From Permanent Staff and Patients
Locum tenens staffing solutions or a locum tenens agency bring flexibility, but ensuring quality requires precise monitoring.
A Stanford study shows that (75%) of patients rely on reviews as the first step in finding a new healthcare provider. Professionals should also do their due diligence in monitoring the staff with reviews.
Peer reviews offer a direct and unbiased way to measure real-time performance. They provide context beyond numerical metrics, allowing you to understand how effectively the locum integrates and contributes. This approach involves these steps:
Establish clear criteria: Set up specific evaluation categories relevant to locum tenens providers. Include aspects like clinical expertise, communication skills, adaptability, and teamwork. Make sure these criteria align with your organization’s standards and patient care goals.
Create an anonymous feedback system: Implement a platform where permanent staff, such as nurses, physicians, or administrative personnel, can share observations anonymously. This encourages honest input, which increases the validity of the reviews.
Analyze feedback and follow-up: Quantitative data provides objectivity, while qualitative insights uncover deeper performance trends. Use the qualitative feedback to conduct one-on-one sessions with the locum. If applicable, set clear goals for their next assignment.
2) Ask Locum Tenens Staff: Reviews and Feedback For Internal Improvements
Gaining insights into locum tenens performance isn’t possible without direct feedback from the actual locum staff and those who worked closely with them.
Yes, feedback from patients and full-time medical professionals is essential, but we also need their comments to provide better service.
Post-assignment surveys provide a structured way to capture these insights, highlighting strengths and improvement areas. Using surveys effectively helps you refine your locum selection process and maintain quality care standards. Here’s how to use them:
Develop role-specific surveys: Tailor the questions to match the locum’s specialty and responsibilities. Include items that evaluate clinical skills, communication, adaptability, and integration into your team. Specificity in questions provides more actionable feedback.
Incorporate quantitative and qualitative questions: Use a mix of rating scales and open-ended questions. Quantitative questions offer a measurable view, while qualitative ones uncover specific examples or patterns that may not be visible through scores alone.
Analyze data for trends: Review survey responses collectively to identify consistent patterns. Compare these findings with other locum evaluations to recognize recurring strengths or challenges that need addressing in future placements.
3) Implement Targeted Performance Metrics Specific to Each Locum’s Tenens Positions
Measuring locum performance requires precision beyond basic evaluations or just asking your locum tenens staffing agency. To implement this effectively, follow these steps:
Identify specialty-specific metrics: Choose indicators that match the locum’s expertise rather than the metrics you use for permanent positions. This ensures you evaluate them on relevant competencies, not general standards. Tailored performance metrics, aligned with specialty and assignment duration, give you targeted insights. These metrics reveal strengths and areas for improvement while sharpening your decision-making process.
Side note: Here’s how you could structure specialty-specific metrics to clearly align each specialty with its relevant evaluation indicators:
| Specialty | Specialty-Specific Metrics |
|---|---|
| Surgeons | Surgical accuracy, complication rates, post-operative infection rates |
| Physical Therapists | Patient recovery rates, adherence to therapy plans, improvement in mobility and pain levels |
| Nurse Practitioners | Patient satisfaction scores, prescription accuracy, diagnosis precision |
| Anesthesiologists | Anesthesia-related complication rates, patient recovery times, effective pain management |
| Emergency Medicine | Response time to critical cases, treatment success rates for acute conditions, patient turnover |
| Radiologists | Diagnostic accuracy, turnaround time for image readings, error rates in image interpretation |
| Pediatricians | Vaccination adherence rates, developmental milestone tracking, patient satisfaction |
| Cardiologists | Diagnostic accuracy for cardiac conditions, treatment success rates, patient follow-up adherence |
| Psychiatrists | Patient improvement scores (e.g., depression/anxiety scales), medication compliance, session attendance rates |
| Obstetricians/Gynecologists | Maternal and infant health outcomes, C-section rates, prenatal care adherence |
Define time-based benchmarks: Establish what success looks like based on the length of the locum’s assignment.
Integrate data collection tools: Use software that tracks and consolidates key performance indicators (KPIs). Automate the process to capture real-time data on patient outcomes, procedural efficiency, and protocol adherence. Share these findings with the locum and your team, providing actionable insights guiding future placements and evaluations.
3.1. Conduct Case Outcome Analysis to Evaluate the Quality of Care Provided by Locum Professionals
Evaluating locum tenens staff extends beyond observing behavior; it involves examining patient outcomes directly linked to their care.
This method offers a precise view of their impact and reveals areas of excellence or concern. When used effectively, case outcome analysis transforms raw data into actionable insights. Here’s how to implement it:
Define relevant patient outcomes: Identify key health outcomes related to the locum’s specialty, such as recovery rates, infection rates, or readmission rates. Focus on metrics that clearly show care quality and patient safety rather than hourly rate or how much they worked.
Establish baseline data: Collect historical data from your facility’s permanent staff to create a benchmark. This allows you to compare the locum’s performance against established standards, ensuring the analysis is contextually accurate.
Track outcomes over specific timeframes: Based on the locum’s duration and the nature of care provided, choose appropriate timeframes to monitor outcomes. Shorter intervals (e.g., weekly reviews) may be necessary for acute care settings, while chronic care assessments might span months. Employ software that automates outcome tracking, aggregating data from patient records and electronic health systems. This minimizes manual errors and delivers real-time analysis for quicker decision-making.
3.2. Track Assignment Completion Rates to Ensure Consistency of Locum Tenens Services
Consistency and reliability are critical when evaluating locum tenens staff. Monitoring assignment completion rates and adherence to schedules offers a clear measure of their reliability and commitment. These indicators help you gauge whether the locum meets the operational demands of your facility. Follow these steps to track this effectively:
Define Standard Completion Criteria: Establish what constitutes a successful completion for different types of assignments—whether it’s full adherence to scheduled shifts or fulfilling specific project deliverables. Ensure these standards are precise and aligned with your facility’s operational needs.
Record Data During Each Assignment: Use scheduling software to log locum attendance, including late arrivals, shift swaps, and missed assignments. This creates an accurate record that’s easy to review and compare over time.
Analyze Trends Across Multiple Assignments: Examine whether patterns of reliability or inconsistency emerge when you review multiple placements of the same locum. This helps you determine if observed issues are situational or part of a broader trend in their performance.
Improving Locum Tenens Jobs by Using New Technologies
The healthcare industry is undergoing a digital transformation, and locum tenens management and staffing is no exception. AI and new technologies are changing the way medical staff provide and enhance patient care.
The integration of cutting-edge technologies is revolutionizing the way locum tenens professionals find and secure assignments while also improving the overall efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare staffing.
Find The Best Locum Tenens Talent
Advanced algorithms analyze vast amounts of data to match locum tenens providers with the most suitable assignments based on their skills, experience, location preferences, and availability. This ensures a more efficient and accurate matching process.
Additionally, AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can streamline communication between locum tenens providers and staffing agencies, answering questions, providing updates, and facilitating the onboarding process.
Streamlined Onboarding and Credentialing on Locum Tenens Roles
Automation tools can expedite the onboarding and credentialing process, reducing administrative burdens for both locum tenens providers and staffing agencies.
Electronic signature and document management systems further streamline the paperwork and paperwork involved, making the process faster and more efficient.
Measure Locum Tenens Staff Performance with Confidence
Effective monitoring and measurement of locum tenens staff ensure consistent, high-quality patient care and long-term organizational success.
Implementing these methods can transform your staffing approach and drive efficiency.
The success of your healthcare service may depend on how well you evaluate and support these critical team members.
Now is the time to act, refine your strategies, and build a system that truly benefits your staff and patients.
Contact us today and guide the medical industry to a brighter tomorrow.
FAQs
What is locum tenens?
Locum tenens is a Latin term meaning "to hold the place of." However, it is used in the healthcare industry to refer to the practice of physicians and healthcare professionals temporarily filling in for other healthcare employees and providers who are absent.
Why do providers choose locum tenens?
There are several reasons why healthcare employers and providers and internal medicine choose locum tenens:
Flexibility
Increased Income Potential
Travel Opportunities
Work-Life Balance
Which providers are best suited for locum tenens?
A wide range of healthcare providers and internal medicine professionals can benefit from locum tenens, but the most popular locum tenens openings are for Physicians (all specialties), Nurse Practitioners, Physicians, Therapists, and Pharmacists.
How do hospitals benefit from locum tenens providers?
Locum tenens providers can quickly fill in for absent staff, ensuring uninterrupted patient care. Staffing agencies handle the recruitment, credentialing, and onboarding processes for locum tenens providers, reducing the administrative burden on hospitals.
Who can work as a locum tenens?
To work as a locum tenens provider and fill vacant positions, candidates must follow a list of requirements:
Be a licensed healthcare professional in good standing.
Have a clean, professional record with no disciplinary actions.
Be able to pass a background check and drug screen.
Be willing to comply with the specific requirements and regulations of the healthcare facilities where you work.
It's important to note that the specific qualifications and requirements may vary depending on the state, specialty, and healthcare facility. Locum Tenen temporary staffing company makes sure you hire the most prepared people to cover your clinical situations and necessities.
But what exactly is locum tenens, and why is it essential that we track their performance? In this article, we explore the meaning of this profession, why it matters, and five proven strategies to assess locum tenens effectiveness.
