As the uncertainties in physician shortage and the recently enacted healthcare reform further, the locum tenens industry makes surprising growth. How can physicians and facilities take advantage of it?
As more and more healthcare facilities financially jump back and prioritize service line quality, the added value of locum tenens, and overall physician recruiting, should also see a positive outlook. With the recent healthcare reform gradually taking effect, the demand for healthcare should continue to increase, and along with this is the need for more physicians who will tend to more than 32 million newly insured patients as well as the aging baby boomer generation.
This added demand for the healthcare industry implies an increase in locum tenens staffing as well. This is reflected by current surveys which put locum tenens in an optimistic light: 73% of healthcare and market leaders plan to expand outpatient services to drive their financial growth forward for the next five years, while 67% of them expect increased physician recruiting demand for the next three years.
Renewed emphasis for a more stable financial climate through cost reduction as well as quality / patient safety, experience and satisfaction has helped locum tenens bounce back. In the same survey, around 25% of the respondents utilize locum tenens as a physician relationship model, which ranked seventh among all choices.
The goals and benchmarks for rural facilities, however, are quite different from their urban counterparts. In the same survey, they rank patient quality and safety as well as physician recruiting as their top priorities for this year, which were followed both by reimbursement and cost reduction. Moreover, a third of rural healthcare facilities across the nation utilize locum tenens as their physician relationship model.
Recent surveys from The Physicians’ Foundation indicate that physicians will utilize varied practice styles and therefore move towards a more heterogeneous workforce, which includes full-time or part-time employment, concierge and locums. In fact, 14% of their physician respondents plan to work as locum tenens doctors in the next three years as more and more provisions from the healthcare reform are enacted.
Bruce Kirby, Chief Executive Officer of Pinnacle Locum Tenens, remarked, “How the healthcare reform will further even out in the next years, as well as the physician shortage and continued concerns over Medicare and other reimbursement arrangements, somehow become factors in furthering the growth of locums industry, specifically in specialties like primary care (being the most sought-after), anesthesiology, cardiology, surgery, neurology, dermatology and radiology among others.”
This adds another dimension to the added value of locum tenens, remarks Kirby. “In our experience, locum tenens is mostly utilized to maintain our facility partners’ service line capacity when their full-time doctors temporarily vacate their positions. As the physician shortage and aging population begin to take its toll among healthcare organizations, more and more of them are turning on to locum tenens physicians to fill that need. Furthermore, locums physicians have the flexibility to produce positive turnover rates for their respective healthcare facility. At Pinnacle Locum Tenens, for instance,” relates Kirby, “almost all of our clients identified the immediate benefits of locum tenens service, such as maintaining healthcare as well as locums being an effective retention strategy.”
Recent industry studies indicate that at least two thirds of administrators and healthcare facility leaders utilize locum tenens to augment their existing physician workforce. Moreover, facilities across the nation have at least used locums physicians in the previous year, while almost half of facilities are actively seeking locums physicians. Furthing this point, at least 80% of surveyed healthcare groups remark that utilizing locum tenens is “worth the cost.”
Market and industry leaders relate that the growth of locum tenens is a positive sign of national financial recovery, but the continuing physician shortage remain to be a major factor for it, and this is aptly echoed among healthcare organizations that seek better service and physician alignment goals. Kirby concludes, “In lieu of supply and demand concerns, locum tenens can also be seen as a significant contributor to maintaining physician supply, as it allows older doctors to remain actively practicing. For many other physicians, locum tenens remains to be an appealing practice style because of the professional and personal benefits it provides.”
References: HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey: Community and Rural; Leadership; Overall Cross-sector Survey, February 2011. “More hospitals reaching out to locum tenens doctors,” Victoria Stagg Elliott, American Medical News, March 7, 2011. “Independent locum tenens physicians savor life without an agency,” ibid., April 25, 2011. “Uncertainty prompts doctors to rethink private practice, according to survey,” ibid., December 13, 2010. “QD: News Every Day–Locum tenens hiring on the rise,” Ryan DuBosar, ACP Internist, February 18, 2011. “Have MD, Will Travel: Locum Tenens Docs Today,” Delicia Honen Yard, Renal&Urology News, October 11, 2010. National Association of Locum Tenens Organizations. “The Locum Tenens Industry: Dips, Troughs, Medical Staffing and More,” Howard Applegate, January 24, 2011.