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Locum doctors perform temporary jobs at medical facilities or doctor’s offices, and are often contracted through agencies. They may be used to fill in for a doctor on vacation or to cover hours when a practice is not usually open. However, some patients may experience a lack of continuity of care and insurance issues. Electronic record keeping could help address these issues.
A locum doctor or locum tenens doctor is a doctor who performs a temporary job at a medical facility or doctor’s office. The term locum tenens is Latin and roughly translates as substitute or substitute. These doctors may also be called freelance doctors since they work when and if they want in locations of their choice, rather than having a job with a specific hospital, facility or doctor’s office.
Statistics vary as to how many doctors are locum tenens, but in most hospitals, up to 50-80% are allowed to work there on a temporary basis. Most locum doctor jobs are contracted through agencies, and many of these doctors, in fact most of them, get their replacement work through an agency. There are a number of agencies designed to place doctors in various positions and they can offer quite good salaries and payment of any necessary malpractice insurance, which can reduce costs. Some agencies also help a locum doctor find a place to live in the area where they hold a temporary position. There are jobs available for general practitioners and specialists.
Some physicians choose to become locum physicians after completion of medical school and board certification. Temporary jobs can give the doctor the opportunity to travel. However, if these jobs are located outside the country where the doctor trained, they may need additional training. Once in an area that the doctor likes very much, he may instead look for a permanent position.
Sometimes small medical practices employ locum physicians to fill hours where the practice will still see patients but is not usually open for business. Alternatively, one doctor may act as locum tenens for another if a doctor with a small practice wishes to take a vacation or needs to leave the practice for a few days or weeks. Hiring a trusted doctor or having an agreement with another doctor means that patients who need medical assistance during this period will not have to seek another doctor elsewhere.
While it is beneficial to have a trusted doctor to handle emergency needs when a person’s primary care physician is unavailable, some complain of some problems that could arise if they have to work with trusted doctors on a regular basis. First, there is little continuity of care because people are unlikely to see the locum doctor more than once. Hospital billing can be separate and this can cause an insurance issue that sometimes requires a battle with an insurance company because the locum doctor is usually not contracted with any insurance company.
One of the ways to address this issue to make sure local doctors have all the information they need would be to institute an electronic record keeping method. So far, although a few programs are available, hospitals and doctors’ offices have not made a blanket decision about using just one of them. Therefore, when a trusted physician treats a patient, you must rely on the patient’s information and may have limited or no access to previous medical records. This is not always the best case scenario for superior patient care, even when a locum tenens physician is highly trained.
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