As physician shortages continue and patient demand rises, healthcare leaders face the dual challenge of managing high burnout rates and retaining their staff. These challenges often lead to unexpected provider turnover, leaving facilities scrambling to maintain continuity of care.
The Importance of a Staffing Contingency Plan
Recruiting and onboarding a new physician or advanced practitioner can take 6 to 18 months, disrupting patient care and straining existing staff. Effective pre-planning and strategic partnerships with locum tenens staffing agencies are essential for swiftly navigating these gaps.
As a healthcare leader, having a well-defined staffing contingency plan is crucial for maintaining continuity of care, safeguarding provider well-being, and ensuring operational stability. The Medicus Transition Program offers an innovative interim staffing solution designed to address clinical staffing challenges with accountability and reliability, ensuring your facility remains resilient and responsive even during unexpected provider turnover.
Medicus has completed over 400 Transition projects nationwide across various specialties such as anesthesia, radiology, OB/GYN, gastroenterology, and more. The Medicus Transition Program ensures healthcare facilities can swiftly address unexpected provider turnover with a reliable and accountable solution that maintains continuity of care and operational stability.
The Medicus Transition Program
The Medicus Transition Program delivers an innovative staffing solution that provides locum tenens coverage within 30 days while ensuring long-term workforce stability. Our approach emphasizes shared accountability in sourcing, scheduling, and cost control, empowering healthcare leaders to tackle unexpected provider turnover confidently. We ensure clinical and cultural alignment by meticulously matching locum tenens physicians and advanced practitioners with your team, which enhances workplace culture and attracts new provider talent.
Additionally, Medicus locum tenens providers are vital for maintaining the well-being of your employed providers as they fill gaps and balance workloads. This approach reduces burnout and significantly improves retention among your permanent staff.
Medicus co-manages all scheduling intricacies, preserving preferred schedules for permanent providers. Furthermore, our permanent recruitment division, Optimum, works seamlessly with your facility to recruit and onboard permanent staff, ensuring continuity of care and supporting long-term stability amidst unexpected turnover.
The Medicus Transition Program Impact:
Ensuring Continuity of Care at a Children's Hospital in Florida
A Florida children's hospital, recognized as the largest level-1 pediatric trauma center within a three-hour radius, faced critical instability due to unexpected retirements and turnover among its pediatric anesthesiologists. The root causes stemmed from a demanding work environment and heightened burnout, which led to decreased surgical volumes, backlogged cases, and slower turnaround times—factors that ultimately compromised patient care.
Leadership spent 90% of their total sourcing pediatric anesthesiologists, which strained resources and impacted the 25 other specialties within the health system. Coverage gaps persisted despite engaging multiple locum tenens agencies at a significant cost. The hospital then turned to the Medicus Transition Program for support.
Key Results of the Pediatric Anesthesiology Transition Project:
- Cultural Expansion: The Medicus pediatric anesthesiology locums infused the permanent team with a positive outlook, fostered a culture of flexibility, and actively supported permanent staff to significantly alleviate burnout.
- Program Growth and Increased Surgical Services: The 20 Medicus locums addressed backlogs and helped expand two operating rooms, advancing the hospital's goal to be a leading pediatric trauma unit.
- End-to-End Solution: Medicus' permanent recruitment division, Optimum, partnered with leadership to help secure permanent pediatric anesthesiologists for the growing program.
The Medicus Transition Program enabled the hospital to regain its ability to deliver comprehensive care, resolve backlogs, and expand services, all while restoring community trust.
Addressing Staffing Challenges in a New York City OB-GYN Department
A leading health system in New York City faced critical staffing challenges within its OB-GYN department. Due to unexpected provider turnover, the system struggled to meet patient demand, leading to disruptions in patient care and significant strains on operational revenue. The health system aimed to transition its OB-GYN team to focus primarily on outpatient clinics, but it encountered difficulties in recruiting and retaining OB-GYNs and certified nurse midwives (CNMs).
The health system sought to build a complete and separate OB hospitalist team to address these issues. The objective of the new OB-GYN department structure was to increase revenue while improving continuity and quality of patient care. To achieve this, leadership engaged the Medicus Transition Program.
Key Results of the OB-GYN Transition Project:
- Improved Efficiency: Medicus quickly sourced, screened and onboarded 20 OB-GYNs and CNMs, all credentialed within 30-45 days. The Medicus locums enabled the health system to transition the permanent OB-GYN team to primarily focus on outpatient clinics. Simultaneously, Medicus covered the labor and delivery unit, allowing leadership to establish an OB hospitalist team.
- Increased Revenue: The new model resulted in a significant revenue spike from office-based and labor and delivery services. In addition, the increased revenue out of the OB-GYN department will fuel future revenue streams in pediatrics and surgical specialties.
- Seamless Transition: Medicus played a crucial role in enabling the health system to reach its goal of having a full-time employed program of OB hospitalist physicians. Medicus continues to provide CNM locum coverage to ensure strategic scheduling and continuity of care.
With Medicus' help, the hospital successfully established a new OB hospitalist model, resulting in a 25% increase in deliveries compared to the previous year. Additionally, continuity and quality of patient care were restored.
Client Perspectives
"Our team has one goal: to provide personalized, quality care to the children and families we care for. The Medicus Transition Program has allowed us to do just that. The fresh perspectives and positivity the Medicus locums have brought to our hospital have reignited energy within the team. We have been able to help so many more families and expand our service offerings, all while maintaining the high standards of care we are known for. The Medicus Transition Program has not only bolstered our capabilities but also reinforced our commitment to making a meaningful difference in the lives of the children and families we serve.". -Hospital Leadership
"The Medicus Transition Program truly enabled our health system to reach our goal of building a full and separate OB hospitalist team. Medicus' prompt and reliable staffing solutions allowed us to maintain high standards of patient care during a critical transition period. We are now able to ensure increased, continuous access to women's health and prenatal care thanks to Medicus. In addition, we have been able to regain unclaimed revenue, ensuring our health system is running efficiently.". - Health System Leadership.
When unexpected provider turnover happens, healthcare leaders need dependable and effective solutions to maintain high standards of patient care. The Medicus Transition Program offers quick placement of top-notch providers, full management support, and a focus on immediate and future staffing needs. By choosing Medicus, healthcare facilities can handle unexpected turnover confidently and ensure their patients continue to receive high-quality care without interruption.
Faced with unexpected provider turnover and in need of long-term locum tenens coverage? Complete the short form below to connect with a Medicus team member.
