Numbers! Here are the Numbers: Leveraging Locum Tenens to Control Healthcare Staffing Costs
Using the expertise of a locum staffing service to help you find temporary healthcare professionals is a versatile answer to healthcare facilities looking to control their costs while still providing excellent care to their patients.
Here’s how:
Optimizing staffing needs depending on patient volume
Whether you’re a small physician practice or a large, regional hospital serving thousands of patients, you’ve no doubt experienced days when patient loads are low, as well as extremely high.
A full component of healthcare pros can be expensive when patient loads are low.
Locum staffing lets you adjust your workforce numbers strategically, adjusting your staffing levels with your patient needs.
Doing so means you don’t need to pay full-time salaries – and benefits – to underutilized staff when patient loads are low.
Yet when patient numbers increase? A locum tenens agency can help you gear up quickly, allowing you to serve your patients in the ways they deserve, while also keeping your employee costs flexible, helping you save money you can spend in other critical ways, as needed.
Using locum tenens professionals can help you MAKE money
Let’s say you’ve noticed that more and more patients are coming to your hospital for chronic conditions, so much so that you’re thinking of hiring an additional internal medicine physician but aren’t yet sure if your patient need has increased for the long-term or is just a “blip.”
Hiring an internal medicine locum for 30 days in which your hospital collection is 75 percent, could see you earn a profit of more than $18K.
(Contact us if you’d like more information on estimating potential revenue gains when using locums.)
Lower – or even prevent – permanent staff burnout
Healthcare professional burnout is a true problem today: more than 143,000 professionals have left (as of July 2023).
Working to provide patient care when your facility is short-staffed can only exacerbate your remaining team members’ stress, potentially causing more employees to burnout and leave.
Plus, working short-staffed can mean you risk decreasing the standard of patient care your patients expect – and you want to deliver.
Keeping a stable workforce by using locum staffing means workloads remain manageable. You also lower the need for more frequent hiring and its associated costs.
Maintain quality care AND revenue flow
Your healthcare professionals need their time off.
Yet, as much as you understand that and want them to take the time they need to rest and recharge, absences due to sabbaticals, vacations, illness, family leaves, etc. can disrupt the quality of your patient care.
Using the services of a locum tenens agency will help ensure uninterrupted patient care at the high levels you’ve set for your facility.
Employing locum professionals when regular staff are out means you’ll avoid not only a potential loss in patient care quality, but also in loss of revenue due to – as just one costly example – having to postpone certain types of surgeries due to surgeon absence.
SUMO Staffing will help you find locum tenens healthcare professionals for your family practice/primary care, hospitalist, internal medicine, pediatric, psychiatry, emergency medicine, urgent care, and more needs.
Learn more about our locum tenens agency services.