Robin Vovk is right where she wants to be at Locumsmart. After spending almost a decade as a radiology locum tenens business development manager, she’s now Manager of Business Development for Locumsmart.
It’s a role where she enthusiastically helps healthcare organizations improve their locum tenens operation by implementing Locumsmart’s locum tenens-specific vendor management system.
The healthcare organizations (or HCOs) she assists work with agencies that deliver locum tenens providers to their healthcare facilities. When HCOs manage temporary providers directly, they will invariably encounter some of the same problems – scattered spreadsheets, complicated shift scheduling, agency contracts with varying terms, messy invoices, and there can be an overall lack of visibility into each organization’s locums spending.
These issues unintentionally create headaches and confusion, but they can also create issues that cost HCOs hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars each year for an organization.
Vovk listens to complaints daily from healthcare executives who hire and manage locum tenens providers. These executives desperately want to streamline their processes and eliminate these pesky complications. Locumsmart solves all those problems in one vendor management system (VMS), Vovk says.
“The big thing we do is improve your efficiency,” Vovk explains. “Locumsmart is the source of truth that organizations can use to optimize and streamline their entire workflow. We’ve perfected the locum workflow so every client can customize it.”
The Language of Locums: The First VMS Built for Locum Tenens
The Locumsmart platform debuted in 2009. Before the development of Locumsmart, the only existing VMS solutions were built for travel nursing, allied, and non-clinical contingent labor staffing, Vovk says. But locums tenens is a world of its own, and facilities can’t just use the same technology in other segments and retrofit it to a VMS platform expecting it to work the same way for locums.
Locumsmart’s founders saw a need in the market for a VMS that could handle all of the nuances of locum tenens staffing. So, they set forth with this in mind, Vovk explains.
“The company started when our founders were working as national account executives at a locums agency,” Vovk says. “They saw how difficult it was for their clients to manage multiple agency partnerships. Clients were overwhelmed.”
Vovk says Locumsmart services 2,575 healthcare facilities, each with its own challenges. Between 2022 and 2023, Locumsmart’s revenue increased 53%.
While improving efficiency is one of Locumsmart’s top selling points, arguably the greatest benefit is the access clients get to a greater variety of agencies and, in turn, more locum tenens providers. In 2023, 136 physician and APP specialty areas were filled on the Locumsmart platform. The system has made sending a request for a provider way easier for the HCO. When a facility has a work order, it can send the order out to more than 80 agencies with a few clicks.
“Nobody would contract 80 agencies on their own,” adds Vovk. “It would be a nightmare. With Locumsmart, you’re automating it, and your organization receives deliverability at an unmatched scale. We have the largest agency market share on our platform.”
“Nobody would contract 80 agencies on their own. It would be a nightmare. With Locumsmart, you’re automating it, and your organization receives deliverability at an unmatched scale. We have the largest agency market share on our platform.”
By contracting with Locumsmart, a facility’s hiring manager can access agencies without picking up the phone or sending dozens of emails. The entire conversation takes place within the platform.
“We have a very robust reporting platform superior to any other technology,” Vovk says. “We offer real-time reporting that users can access themselves. We have 19 pre-built reports, including locum cost projections and business analysts who custom-build reports. In addition, we provide schedulers who enter all HCO locum provider shifts into the Locumsmart tool — essentially, we are a VMS with MSP-type servicing.”
Locumsmart has comprehensive real-time reports for healthcare systems to access critical data points within seconds, Vovk explains.
“The reports encapsulate all key performance indicators, invoice accruals, past and future locum spend, expense invoice details, average expense costs, average daily cost by specialty, shift scheduling, timesheet reporting, the list goes on from there,” Vovk says.
Peek Inside Locumsmart
Users can filter each of those reports, too, which allows an HCO to view data from specific date ranges by healthcare facility, provider specialty, and more. Vovk says if there’s a data point outside the scope of what they currently offer, all a client has to do is ask, and they’ll get the business intelligence team to create a custom report for them.
In addition to the full scope of reporting, Vovk says Locumsmart clients enjoy an account manager, dedicated schedulers, business analysts, and an invoice compliance team at no cost — this is standard servicing the team offers each client. She says other VMS platforms don’t provide the majority of these services.
The platform didn’t start out offering clients this full range of services. As it grew, Locumsmart built on what it offered based on what the market called for, Vovk says.
“Initially, Locumsmart did not offer the full range of services they do today,” Vovk recalls. “Locumsmart is an agile organization that evolves alongside our clients as market conditions and client needs change. Offering comprehensive services develops stronger partnerships with both healthcare systems and vendors alike.”
“Locumsmart has protective firewalls in place, and we never share information with agencies,[including CHG brands]. Ultimately, Locumsmart empowers healthcare systems to maintain control of their locum programs, including which agencies they choose to engage with and how.”
Solving Locums Puzzles
After a decade as the industry-leading locum VMS platform, Locumsmart was acquired in 2020 by CHG Healthcare, the country’s largest locum tenens healthcare staffing provider, strapping rocket boosters to the platform. While some competitors have cried foul over CHG’s ownership of the VMS, believing it confers an unfair advantage to CHG-owned agency brands such as CompHealth and Weatherby, Vovk states this is not the case.
“Locumsmart has protective firewalls in place, and we never share information with agencies,” Vovk says. “Ultimately, Locumsmart empowers healthcare systems to maintain control of their locum programs, including which agencies they choose to engage with and how.”
Another differentiator is that Locumsmart’s proprietary technology was built from the ground up by its in-house development team. Vovk says other technology solutions in the healthcare VMS space today are purchased technology companies will “white label and call their own.”
“We do regular technology updates and innovations every other week to improve our platform,” Vovk notes. “We have a five-year roadmap of releases in the works.”
Recent upgrade examples include a robust bid comparison tool that helps facilities compare candidates side by side from a quality and cost perspective to maximize a company’s ability to hire top providers faster and save money in the process. Another enhancement rolled out last year was “line-item billing,” which Vovk says helps HCOs pay agencies faster and deepens the relationship between the HCO and the agency.
Locumsmart helps HCOs confidently manage locums providers, and the support it offers is possible because of the time and attention it puts into the system.
“I’ve seen every VMS product on the market today,” Vovk says. “As a 25-year industry veteran, I would put my money on Locumsmart every time.”
