QUESTION:      We are seeing a steady flow of locum tenens physicians come through our hospital in specialties where physicians are in short supply. Many of these physicians are here for months…sometimes even years! What options do we have when we are granting these privileges? Is the traditional “temporary privileges” approach to privileging enough for these physicians?

ANSWER:       While locums may come and go, the fact that all clinical privileges carry the same legal obligations and implications remains.

Because we see more and more locum physicians filling long-term vacancies, the hospital and medical staff leadership need to anticipate this reality and determine whether the expedited, abbreviated credentialing process that has traditionally been used for temporary privileges is enough. From our experience, more and more hospitals and medical staffs are deciding that it is not.

Those facilities are adopting a more robust credentialing process for locum physicians, typically taking these requests for privileges through the full medical staff process, and recredentialing their locum physicians on an annual or biennial basis. While this requires more of the medical staff’s time, energy, and resources, these medical staffs have decided that the benefit of ensuring the quality of care being provided and whether there is a continued need for the locums outweighs this administrative burden.

These are among the issues that Susan Lapenta and Ian Donaldson will discuss during their audio conference on February 3, 2015, “Locum Tenens, My How You’ve Changed: New Rules for the New Roles of Long-Term Locum Tenens Providers.” Please join us by registering here.