How Hiring Locum Tenens Can Help Your Facility Achieve Flexible Scheduling
A healthcare facility is a dynamic and constantly evolving environment. The process of running and staffing a hospital is an incredibly demanding and complex endeavor, further compounded by stringent regulations. From the legal requirements for licensure to the difficulties of recruiting and retaining qualified personnel, managers must juggle multiple moving parts to serve their patients effectively.
The needs of clinics, hospitals, and medical practices may vary, but the core principles remain the same. A successful healthcare facility must balance operational excellence with patient experience while remaining compliant and within budget. You must have the right personnel, processes, and technology to achieve these goals.
At the heart of any successful healthcare facility is its staff. Every role is critical to providing quality care, from doctors and nurses to administrators and support personnel. A key factor in staffing a facility is flexibility and responsiveness. By quickly adjusting staffing levels based on patient demand or any other changes, managers can ensure that the facility runs as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.
Working with locum tenens doctors and APPs allows healthcare organizations to maintain continuity of care while creating more efficient staffing solutions. In addition, by contracting temporary team members, facilities can ensure they have emergency coverage, offer staff members the shifts they prefer, and expand offerings to telehealth services.
Continue reading to find out how hiring locum tenens can help your facility achieve flexible scheduling.
Responsive emergency coverage
Hospitals are often the center of attention during emergencies, ranging from natural disasters and pandemics to accidents and catastrophes.
As frontrunners in providing lifesaving treatments and health services, it’s no surprise that facilities can become overwhelmed during times of crisis, as they provide care for a high influx of patients. Unfortunately, the demand for care can quickly outpace the supply, leaving some patients without access to much-needed medical attention as staff scramble to keep up with the increased workload.
You may be able to call on your existing staff to work extra shifts or call in additional personnel, but those solutions may not be immediate. Having a pool of locum tenens clinicians on standby can provide much-needed relief when the situation arises, allowing you to respond quickly to unexpected staffing gaps.
Flexible staff scheduling
Your staff works hard. Doctors, APPs, and nurses are dedicated to providing patient-centered care and often go above and beyond their call of duty. However, working long shifts and taking on extended hours is mentally and physically taxing and can lead to burnout and fatigue, which may impact patient care and safety.
Your personnel must have the opportunity to rest and recharge. So, besides days off and vacation time, it’s beneficial to provide flexible scheduling options for your team, allowing them to balance work and home life.
Offering your staff various shifts and schedule types such as part-time, short shifts, block schedules with 7 on/7 off, or other options helps them manage their work/life balance more effectively and ensures everyone is working to their full potential. But it can be challenging to cover every shift with everyone’s preferences considered.
Locum tenens physicians can help bridge the gap in staffing and give your personnel more control over their schedules. You’ll have the flexibility to switch up staffing patterns, ensuring the necessary coverage is in place.
Expanded telehealth offerings
Telehealth has revolutionized healthcare delivery, allowing patients to conveniently access medical care from the comfort of their own homes. Offering telehealth services benefits your facility and your patients — it reduces wait times, lowers healthcare costs, and improves communication and collaboration between healthcare providers, patients, and facilities.
With the increasing use of technology in healthcare, telehealth has become an invaluable tool for improving patient experience, alleviating administrative burdens, and enabling staff to work more efficiently. It also increases staff flexibility as physicians can provide virtual consultations at times and places convenient for both parties.
Remote care delivery helps ensure better access to services and allows doctors to save time and resources by working remotely rather than having to travel back and forth from one physical location to another. Moreover, telehealth solutions offer significant cost-saving opportunities for facilities as it reduces the cost of in-person visits and administrative tasks.
Telehealth is becoming an increasingly important feature of flexible healthcare solutions. And one way of effectively providing telehealth services is to hire locum tenens physicians to help your facility transition smoothly into the world of remote care delivery.
Locum tenens doctors can provide specialist skills and services that may not be available in-house, helping your facility keep up with the increasing demand for virtual appointments.