How to manage your locum agency partners: A guide for recruiters

Most recruiters work with more than one locum tenens agency, and a quarter of recruiters work with four or more agencies, according to CHG Healthcare research. With multiple agencies comes more phone calls, emails, and follow-ups, which can make juggling locum providers challenging. That’s why building well-defined, transparent, and trusting relationships with a select group of locum partners is essential to help things run smoothly. Here are a few tips for successfully managing your locum tenens agency partners.

Narrow the pool to a few quality agencies

Often, recruiters come into a new job finding they’ve inherited a complex locum situation with multiple vendors of varying quality. Juggling communication with them all can be time-consuming and stressful.

“Invariably, you spend part of your day working for the locum company because you're just so inundated with trying to get CVs through. You're talking to people; they're asking you questions about the job,” says Steven Jacobs, manager of physician and provider recruitment for Jefferson Einstein and president of the Mid-Atlantic Physician Recruiter Alliance.

“You’re managing locum [providers] from different companies with different sets of processes and getting paid differently, getting rates differently, so it's about management,” he says.

That’s why it's important to narrow the vendor pool to a few trusted agencies. According to CHG Healthcare research, over half of healthcare facilities say the ideal number is two or three agencies. 

“I've got a handful of people I trust, and unless I have a solid reason, that circle doesn't need to expand. These are the people I can go to, and I know they'll listen to me and get the job done,” explains Mark Douyard, former senior physician recruiter for Bayhealth Medical Center.

Evaluate potential locum agency partners

Whether you’re building a network of locum partners from scratch or trying to get a handle on existing locum contracts, determining which agencies will consistently deliver quality candidates can be a real challenge.

“If I had to start from scratch, I would ask for referrals from colleagues I knew and respected,” Douyard says. “Beyond that, you want to look at the contract, you want to look at experience, you want to get and check references.”

How do healthcare staffing agencies compare? Check out this recruiter’s guide

When managing and evaluating locum partners, the primary factors to consider include deliverability, quality, support, and cost.

Deliverability of locum needs

Every facility has unique locum needs. If you know you need something specific, like OB/GYNs or neurologists, it helps to dig deep to make sure your agency partners can deliver viable candidates.

“I would want to know how many neurologists you have placed in the last 12 months, where you have placed them, and what the record has been. You dig down a little and start asking some of those questions, and if they can't answer them, it's easy enough to go to another company,” Douyard says.

If the agency can’t provide that information, that’s a red flag you shouldn’t ignore. “If they're taking more than 24 to 48 hours to get back with me on what their numbers are and how many engagements they've had, I can already tell you they have no experience,” says Sasha Randolph, former recruitment and retention manager for the Kansas Recruitment and Retention Center, Rural Health Education and Services, the University of Kansas Medical Center.

Quality of locums providers

Bringing on a locum provider can be a real gamble for healthcare facilities. “It can be hard to know who we're getting, what we're getting, whether they'll show up or not, whether they'll show up and ask for more money the day they start — all of these kinds of things that happen to us regularly,” Jacobs says.

That’s why trusting relationships with locum partners are so important. Do you have an agency representative who is responsive and understands your needs? Does the agency have a track record of sending quality candidates — and what actions do they take when there are problems with a locum provider?

“That's where the relationship comes in,” says Douyard. Because of the relationships he’s built, he knows his locum tenens partners aren’t going to send him a marginal candidate or a brand new one that they haven’t worked with before.

Get a quality locum provider: 7 ways to ensure a positive outcome

Administrative support

True locum partners help lift the administrative load. “Some of these smaller companies promise the moon and can't deliver,” Douyard says.

“You want to know what kind of credentialing and licensing assistance they have because if you leave it up to the doctor to do that, it won't get done on time. So, what kind of support and back-office infrastructure do you have in place to handle that kind of stuff?” he adds.

Consider if quality of candidates outweighs cost

Cost is certainly an important factor when managing locum tenens agencies. However, in a CHG Healthcare survey, most recruiters said that deliverability and candidate quality outweigh cost when hiring locums.

Cost is “huge,” Randolph says. Even so, it’s “not the first thing on the list.”

Jacobs agrees. “If I can find a good reputable company that can give me good reputable candidates, I'll work on the rest. I'll work with them on the price. I'll work on the travel and expenses. We’ll negotiate that after the fact as long as you can prove to me that you can do the job.”

How much revenue can your locum provider bring in? Find out with this calculator

Build a staffing team

Managing locum tenens agencies doesn’t have to be a time-consuming burden. Once you’ve shortened your roster to a few trusted partners, those agencies can become go-to members of your team, helping you achieve your staffing goals with vetted, quality locum providers — and much less administrative hassle.

CompHealth specializes in finding the best physicians, advanced practice providers, and allied providers to fill your staffing needs. Call us at 800.453.3030 or click the button below.