Locums CME #44 | Call for Docs Means High Comp, 6 Questions for OB/GYN Locums, Free Med School Downsides & More

By Bradley Roberts

2024-11-18

It’s a physician feeding frenzy

Welcome to Locums CME 44, Locumpedia’s bi-weekly roundup of news designed to help physicians and APPs maximize the locum lifestyle.

Our lead story: The physician job market sees record-high compensation offers and incentives as corporate-owned practices and community hospitals compete for talent. Some physicians report recruitment packages with relocation allowances exceeding $100K and signing bonuses over $500K. Also, NPs, PAs, and other APPs are being heavily recruited, specifically in rural and underserved areas.

Also, in this edition: Hayes Locums shares essential questions for OB/GYN locums, Vista Staffing offers CME planning tips for locum providers, and AMA-backed credentialing changes aim to support provider wellness.

Continue your locums education with Locums CME 44 below.

In CME 44:

With Physicians in High Demand, Job Seekers Are in the Driver’s Seat

October 23, 2024 | Physicians Weekly

The landscape of physician recruitment is changing dramatically in several ways, from the kind of organizations that are hiring to the offers being made to candidates:

There are more types of organizations recruiting physicians than ever before. From 2019 to 2022, the number of corporate-owned physician practices—such as insurance companies, private equity groups, telemedicine groups, urgent care centers, and retail clinics—grew by 86%.
Compensation is rising with demand. Those who recruit physicians report that family medicine recruitment packages can easily exceed $100,000. Relocation allowances are reported as high as $150,000, and there are even examples of signing bonuses of more than $500,000.
Sustainable staffing models are opening opportunities for APPs across various geographies and roles. Driven by the overwhelming physician shortage, which is felt acutely in rural and other underserved areas, NPs, PAs, and other APPs are also being heavily recruited.

Given these trends, working with a recruiter can provide context for finding the best workplace match. Evaluating an offer based on salary and benefits, as well as the facility’s day-to-day environment, expectations, and patient population, will help a provider find meaningful work that supports their quality-of-life needs.

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Your Locums Prescription

Locums Opportunities Enhance Work Lives

October 29, 2024 | Physician on Fire

Physicians and APPs in permanent positions can enhance their work lives by exploring locums assignments or occasional work opportunities in the following ways:

Earning More—Extra income can help to pay off student loans, save for retirement, and create a more robust safety net.
Avoiding Burnout—A periodic change of setting and patient population can counteract the risk of burnout from a permanent position. Locums and short-term positions may also have fewer administrative pressures, allowing providers to focus on patient care.
Exploring Interests—Through contract assignments in a new setting or city, physicians and APPs may find fulfilling and intellectually stimulating work that expands their horizons and strengthens their skillsets in their full-time roles.

Beyond locums, there are other opportunities for physicians and APPs to supplement their income including being a medical expert witness; participating in medical surveys; and writing, teaching, podcasting, and consulting.

OB/GYN Physicians and APPs: 6 Questions to Ask About Trying Locums

October 21, 2024 | Hayes Locums

In many settings, locums OB/GYNs make the difference in patient continuity of care. To help evaluate how locums may work for you, here are responses to six common questions for OB/GYN’s to consider:

Is working locums right for you? OB/GYNs are always on call, pushing the work week to sometimes double the standard 40 hours. For those craving a better work-life balance without letting your skills get rusty, you may be interested in trying locums. It is ideal to commit to assignments that last at least two weeks and may repeat.
Does the short-term nature of locums negatively affect continuity of care? Since many OB/GYN locums assignments repeat, asking the provider to be two weeks on, two weeks off, two weeks back on again, for example. Most patients can plan to work with that type of schedule.
What are the job’s most significant challenges? Because OB/GYNs typically draw from a vast clinical toolbox, there’s often very little difference between a permanent and a locums position for OB/GYNs. If in an under-resourced area, a physician or APP may also address questions usually sent to specialists, but you may have experienced this to a degree in your permanent role.
Where are locums OB/GYNs most often needed? Rural facilities across the country are struggling to keep their labor and delivery departments open; many have closed, and that trend is expected to continue. The presence of locums OB/GYN providers can be the one reason a pregnant person gets care near their home and doesn’t have to travel hours away.
What’s one thing you can do to help ensure an assignment is right for you? Talk to a provider at the facility and someone who works with the agency. Ask questions about the patient population, workplace and community environments, and facility processes to make sure the answers are a good fit for you.
What’s the key skill a locums OB/GYN should have? Being a successful OB/GYN is the same in locums as being in a permanent position: having good bedside manner.

Staying Ahead of the Curve: Essential Continuing Education Tips for Locums Physicians and APPs

October 17, 2024 | Vista Staffing

Continuing education is valuable and required for physicians and APPs. For locums providers, who move between assignments and sometimes across states and certifying bodies, it is especially crucial that you stay ahead of schedule with your education. Here are some practical tips for doing that:

Make continuing education a habit. Set aside time each week for study.
Track your certification deadlines so you’re not completing your CMEs at the last minute.
Take advantage of online courses, which often allow you to work at your own pace.
Use some of your time between assignments to complete courses or attend a credit-offering workshop.
Seek an assignment near a credit-offering conference that you could attend immediately before or after the assignment.
Put technology to work for you. Use resources such as online databases of courses and apps for tracking education requirements.

Continuing education helps locums physicians and APPs stay sharp, compliant, and ready for any opportunity.

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Physician Wellness Retreat

Changes in Credentialing Applications Support the Well-Being of Over 1 Million Providers

October 25, 2024 | AMA

According to ALL IN: Wellbeing First for Healthcare, a coalition of healthcare organizations and an American Medical Association partner organization, significant strides have been made in destigmatizing credentialing language around provider mental health, lowering fears of career ramifications.

Previously common questions by state boards, hospital credentialing committees, and insurers about past diagnoses and treatment are unnecessary and directly detrimental. Physicians and APPs have reported that they too often resist seeking support and treatment for possible mental health concerns because they fear professional retribution. Experts, including the AMA, say that for the benefit of both clinicians and patients, applications should ask yes/no questions only about current conditions that impair judgment or otherwise negatively impact a provider’s competence.

Efforts around this matter have been impactful. As of September 1, the licensing and credentialing applications affecting more than a million licensed health professionals no longer ask inappropriate mental health questions. This includes documentation used by 29 state medical boards, a 16% increase from last year, and 375 hospitals for their credentialing applications, a 400% increase. The first insurance company, dental licensing board, and state nursing licensure boards have also signed on to make this change this year.

Advocates continue to push for more change, including lobbying for state-and federal-supported employment laws and wellness programs.

Communication Boundaries Ensure Patient and Clinician Well-Being

October 20, 2024 | Healio

Communication technology such as EHR portal messages, texts, cell phone calls, and social media connect patients and physicians like never before: all day, every day, and often with the expectation of a rapid response. Communicating guidelines at both the system and provider levels are crucial so patients feel cared for and physicians and APPs feel empowered.

Facilities should establish clear communication expectations, requirements, and boundaries to create a reliable framework that supports effective provider-patient interactions. Within this structure, physicians and APPs can exercise individual control, setting personal standards for patient responsibility, such as deciding if and when to share personal contact information and defining their expectations for response timing and frequency. This balance between institutional guidelines and individual provider preferences ensures that communication is both consistent and personalized, creating a more supportive environment for both patients and providers.

Technology options help with access to care by allowing each patient and provider to determine what will best suit their unique communication needs. Well-crafted guidelines contribute to this success.

New AI Tools May Help Lessen Administrative Burden

October 21, 2024 | Medical Economics

According to a new report by Google Cloud and The Harris Poll, 80% of providers say that administrative overload is a direct cause of less time with their patients. Google hopes that two new Google Cloud tools will help reduce that burden by streamlining processes and improving data collection and analysis.

Vertex AI Search for Healthcare helps physicians and APPs search EHRs and medical documents quicker and with more result accuracy.

The Healthcare Data Engine creates a comprehensive longitudinal patient data record to support insights and improve patient outcomes.

Doctor’s Notes

Free Medical School Is Not the (Only) Solution to the Physician Shortage

October 21, 2024 | The Atlantic

Medical school debt has long been known as a problem that affects more than just the personal budgets of individual physicians. It is one of the reasons for the lack of diversity among students.

Debt is also considered part of the main reason for the physician shortage in certain crucial yet lower-paying fields, such as primary care. To address this, several medical schools are reconsidering their tuition. The Grossman School of Medicine at New York University (NYU) has been tuition-free for six years.

A small handful of other schools have followed suit. However, some data from NYU indicates that this has not had the anticipated sweeping positive effect:

The percentage of NYU’s medical students who went into primary care is about the same as before the tuition change. One of the country’s greatest needs is primary care, which is expected to have a shortage of 40,000 physicians by 2036.
Residency locations remain the same. Since that is often a predictor of where a physician will continue to practice, lowered tuition alone does not seem to indicate a diversification of practice areas.
The student body has not diversified proportional to the school’s applications. Applications to NYU from under-represented students increased by 102%. However, the percentage of incoming “financially disadvantaged” students fell from 12% in 2017 to 3% in 2019. The proportion of Black students declined slightly, and that of Latino students increased somewhat. Nationwide, as of 2022, only 6% of physicians identified as Black and 7% as Hispanic.

It is not enough to offer free medical school. Increasing the number of practicing physicians as well as diversifying both the physician pool and where they practice requires a multipronged approach, such as:

Diversifying the types of medical schools offering free education: The schools that are currently tuition-free do not tend to attract the kinds of students who will choose to practice in underserved areas. They are based in cities, and their students often have deep roots there.
Reforming and making school and residency admissions more accountable: NYU saw a 47% increase in applicants the year after it started offering free schooling, but the number of available spots for accepted students did not increase proportionally. This increased competition disproportionately affected applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Offering targeted relief: Focus on removing the cost of medical school for low-income students or those who enter primary care.
Improving compensation and benefits for primary care physicians: Currently, they make about $200,000 annually, while specialists can earn more than double that. Free medical school is not enough to equalize that.

Strategic Staffing Can Help Resource-Strained Health Centers

October 22, 2024 | Medical Xpress

A new study finds that physicians, NPs, and PAs enhance different aspects of patient care, highlighting the importance of strategic staffing in addressing specific health needs.

The researchers studied the staffing models of nearly 800 health centers nationwide. These facilities care for 32 million Americans, many of whom live in poverty or are from minority racial and ethnic groups.

They categorized each model as one of five types: balanced proportion of physicians, nurse practitioners, and PAs; more nurse practitioners than physicians; more physicians than nurse practitioners; roughly equal proportion of physicians and nurse practitioners; and health centers with workforces two to five times larger than other centers. They then measured the performance of each model on 14 common points.

The researchers found that centers with more physicians performed better on cancer screening, HIV testing, and other diagnostics-based tests. Those with more NPs and PAs did well on health promotion metrics, such as obesity assessment, healthy eating counseling, and infant vaccinations.

These findings help health centers with limited funding prioritize their staffing solutions, including what type of locums to recruit. Because most health centers offer various services, these findings also indicate the need for federally sponsored initiatives such as student loan forgiveness to remove financial barriers to physicians and APPs choosing to work in lower-paying health centers.