With staffing shortages and burnout at critical levels, locum tenens providers are increasingly filling coverage gaps. When you don’t have time to sift through countless candidate applications, a locum tenens staffing agency can help filter out the noise. And the right staffing partner will hold their candidates to the same high standards as your team. That’s how we treat our rigorous screening process at Interim Physicians.
Quality: It’s Our Core Value
We know facilitating the right provider-facility match is vital to achieving quality patient care. We also know this process requires fully understanding each hospital’s verifications, thoroughly vetting applicants, and seamlessly credentialing each candidate against those requirements. That’s why we have a department called Quality Assurance (QA), a team of experts dedicated to fostering excellence in customer service and getting our doctors credentialed as efficiently as possible.
To aid providers, our QA team:
- Gathers all appropriate documentation and sorts through burdensome paperwork.
- Prefills everything on the provider’s application and obtains all necessary signatures.
- Fields all requests from the hospital for additional information.
To alleviate pressure on our clients, we:
- Ensure all submitted applications adhere to the facility’s expectations so that they don’t have to request additional details.
- Assist with any provider follow-ups.
- Coordinate with our physician relationship management team to acquire necessary verifications and insurance information.
This model decreases everyone’s burden. If a doctor is working in four different places, it requires four different applications and four different sets of requirements that are often similar but never the same. Interim Physicians President Shawn Mullen believes QA acts as an effortless extension of our recruiters and account executives.
“At Interim Physicians, we have two customers: clients who need physicians to cover shifts and the physicians who agree to fill those shifts. QA ensures top-notch industry service throughout the entire credentialing and onboarding process,” Shawn says. “They make what can be an arduous process as easy as possible for clients and physicians alike. The department is a huge part of what makes Interim so special.”
Our QA team works hard to understand customer needs from a regulatory standpoint and how each facility wants its applications filled out.
Our job is to shepherd the process as much as we can to make it as simple as possible for both the client and provider; we want each locum tenens assignment to be a seamless transition into the schedule.
“Working with Interim is like night and day compared to other locums companies. They’re organized, efficient, and on the ball with everything. All their documents come in completed on the first shot. I cannot say enough good things about working with them!”
Concierge-Style Service
Whether it’s alleviating the burden of a confusing application from a frustrated doctor or ensuring that nine applications await a decision-maker the day they return from vacation, we operate with a customer-first mentality. This culture is a testament to our Director of Quality Assurance, Melanie Loehr.
Melanie explains how her team helps Interim differentiate staffing in the locums space; it’s our emphasis on quality over quantity.
“Other agencies have a much higher volume in their departments. One specialist might juggle a hundred applications at a time. That’s how mistakes happen. By contrast, we keep our average files to about 10-15 per representative. That means we’re looking at each file multiple times a day to doublecheck that we’ve followed up on everything. I like to call it a ‘concierge model of customer service.’”
Interim has worked hard to build strong relationships with our practice management groups and repeat hospitals. Once our QA team is familiar with their requirements, we can anticipate their needs and proactively prepare future files for submittal to save these facilities time. These strong external partnerships are mirrored within our organization.
Organizational Longevity
Although QA is a small army of 13, the department has a combined total of 40+ years of licensing and credentialing experience and an average tenure of five years at Interim. The consistent training and deep market knowledge allow Melanie’s culture of concierge service to thrive.
“Of course, in locums, speed to market is important. But I coach my team not to rush through a half-completed application just so we can say that we were the first submittal. We’re going to do the work to get everything that’s needed over to the hospital in a timely fashion so that we’re the first fully completed and accurate submittal. That’s why hospitals love us.”
Interim understands hospitals don’t seek documents because it’s fun to make doctors sign hundreds of papers. There’s an overwhelming list of regulations that they must adhere to, so QA exists to weed through everything for you so that you don’t have to.
“My favorite part of my job is providing a needed service. This process is extremely complicated, so it’s rewarding to hear a provider or client say, ‘You made that so easy. When can we work with you again?’ Ultimately, that means more patients continue to receive care who otherwise wouldn’t. And that’s more fulfilling than I can put into words.”
