The Problem

Boyer and her team vet the locums talent by examining their educational background, training, and history, but crucially also conduct reference checks to assess what people of a similar educational and qualification background say not only about the candidate’s clinical skills but also their soft/interpersonal skills.

“We know that when providers have strong interpersonal skills, they do really well in these types of locums assignments,” said Boyer. “Locums is a challenging and highly agile environment. These physicians are going into situations and facilities where they’ve never been before. It’s important that they can assimilate quickly and seamlessly jump in and make an impact. That’s not a skill set that everyone has.”

Boyer continued, underscoring just how important soft skills are: “Being easy to work with is underacknowledged in healthcare settings but it’s vitally important for all parties involved.”

While VISTA, long known for their commitment to patient care, physician success, and quality outcomes, had made reference checking a mandatory part of the placement process, it just wasn’t happening quickly enough. Recruiters used paper forms and would take a reference verbally, fill out the form, and then upload it manually. Eventually, the agency moved to DocuSign for form completion and signature, but it would still have to be manually ported over to VISTA’s CRM, Bullhorn.

“We’d find we were getting really close to the start of the assignment, and we still hadn’t collected the professional references,” said Boyer. “It was getting really difficult for our team to chase them down. Physicians are working all sorts of schedules. Some work the night shift. Some work 12-hour shifts in the OR. When can a recruiter call them without waking them up or interfering with their jobs? What if they’re awake when our office is closed? And even if we could get them on the phone, which physician wants to have a 10-minute phone call for a reference check?”

The Result

Reference turnaround time has decreased from three weeks on average to two days or less. The reference completion rate is 90% now with VISTA using RefAssured. And instead of running references right before placement and onboarding, VISTA now commences the reference check much earlier in the process. In doing so, they ensure that only the most flexible, interpersonally astute, and clinically skilled applicants actually make it to the bedside.

What used to take recruiters days of manual work to manually fill out and upload forms after spending hours on the phone trying to chase down physicians across various shifts has turned into a methodical, quick, turnkey process that results in better insight and happier talent, recruiters, and customers.

Additionally, RefAssured’s built-in lead generation capabilities have provided a source of revenue and talent pipeline for VISTA that has been transformative to the business considering the shortage of locum tenens providers available. So far, VISTA has generated 309 locum tenens clinical talent leads and 61 sales leads in less than a year.

“Those leads!” said Boyer. “Both on the talent and sales side, the leads that RefAssured has provided for us have been unbelievably helpful. They’ve allowed us to get additional candidates into our pool that we never otherwise would have seen. And the process by which leads can opt-in is so unobtrusive and so inviting that we look better as a company by nature of being affiliated with it. We know, based on how elegantly the opt-in process is designed, that when a lead expresses interest in working with us as talent or as a prospective customer, that they are truly interested and enthusiastic.”

Another benefit of using RefAssured has been using reference reports for talent marketing and new customer acquisition.

“There are so many good nuggets that you can take from the comments in the RefAssured reference reports and use it to present a candidate to a customer or prospect,” said Boyer. “We can paint such a better, more vivid picture of who an applicant is for our current clients and our future clients.”

And VISTA’s facility customers have reacted very positively to reference reports from RefAssured. Boyer explained: “The facilities love the reports. They love the format. They love the flexibility by which we can send those reports to them so that it meets the requirements of all different types of facilities.”

Facilities also love that using RefAssured allows VISTA to spot red flags with applicants before they turn into liabilities for the agency and facility regarding patient care. Boyer elucidated: “Nearly every client we work with has electronic medical records and one of the questions we ask in our RefAssured reference checks is about how the provider does with charting and record keeping. It seems like an odd question at first, but it’s not. Locums physicians work 12-hour shifts and then hand off to another physician. If they can’t take accurate, comprehensive notes in an EMR in a way that’s meaningful and helpful to the next physician who takes over a patient’s care, what happens to the patient? These are things we need to confidently assess ahead of time.”