Amid a realignment in the healthcare staffing industry, many hospitals are renegotiating contracts with anesthesia partners.
One such hospital staffing partner had multiple agencies working to fill challenging anesthesia locum tenens coverage gaps in Indiana. The Interim Physicians team worked together to identify an ideal fit for the positions, creating potential for long-term opportunities in multiple specialties.
Finding a Unique Candidate in a Highly Competitive Field
The client was in a difficult position: they needed a locum tenens anesthesiologist for three rotating sites with strict schedule blocks.
One facility in Indiana required an anesthesiologist on Mondays, a second location required support on Tuesdays, and a third location required an anesthesiologist on Wednesdays. In total, extensive travel across the state was a significant hurdle in finding a candidate. The drive time from the Tuesday location to the Wednesday worksite was more than four hours.
According to our lead account executive for the client, “finding a single doctor who has the flexibility and willingness to work at all three locations like that is very rare. It involves a lot of travel, and some are worried about the lack of continuity.”
The difficulty of filling the vacancies was reflected in how long they had been open. Ideally, the client preferred finding a single candidate willing to travel to all three locations, but they had been seeking this hard-to-find candidate for three months with no success.
This created risk of coverage gaps, OR schedule disruptions, and increased call burden for remaining staff. Given the continued growth in anesthesia demand, rewarding compensation alone couldn’t solve the problem.
To address the issue, the client had already reached out to multiple recruiting agencies to find a good fit before contacting our account executive, giving them a head start on Interim Physicians. It would require strong collaboration and robust recruiting pipelines to fill vacancies before the other firms.
“We stepped in later than everyone else, so we knew we had to move quickly and lean on our established provider pipelines,” Interim’s account executive noted.
Teamwork Leads to a Breakthrough
The lead account executive worked with team members across Interim Physicians to identify the best available candidates. Recruiters delved into provider pipelines across multiple states, initially aiming to identify multiple candidates to fill the three vacancies, as it seemed unlikely to find a single locum tenens provider willing and able to fill all three positions.
However, through their collaboration, they identified a rare locum anesthesiologist willing to travel to each of the three locations throughout the week, exactly what the client was looking for.
“We worked around the clock together to find good candidates, even though other agencies had been working to fill the vacancy for longer.”
Everything seemed to be falling into place, but a potential roadblock appeared. One of the three facilities unexpectedly lost a full-time anesthesiologist, creating an urgent need for a full-time physician in addition to their locum candidate. This surprise vacancy had the potential to derail the client’s relationship with the facility. But instead of disrupting their plans, the Interim Physicians team identified a qualified candidate for the client the same day.
“I talked to them for about 15 minutes right after finding the second, permanent candidate. You could hear the relief in her voice.”
With both candidates in place, the only thing left to do was ensure the client was satisfied with their ability to fit seamlessly into their new environments.
“We knew we had quality candidates, but it’s always beneficial to build a personal connection. That’s why we helped them bond over some shared life experiences. These types of little human connections pave the way for a longstanding relationship.”
The Partnership
With existing contracts across regions and deep provider pipelines, the recruiting team at Interim Physicians demonstrated the ability to quickly fill complex vacancies. As demand for anesthesiology continues to grow, Interim has positioned itself as a long-term partner to the client.
Additionally, the client has established relationships with radiology departments. They were so impressed by how Interim Physicians handled the recruiting process in a difficult-to-fill field that they expressed interest in collaborating on other specialties in the future.
As the lead account executive put it, “We really helped them make a good impression with their partnered hospitals through our fast turnaround. This is the beginning of something that could last a long time.”