Types of Supplemental Healthcare Staffing
Supplemental healthcare staffing is when healthcare providers hire temporary workers to fill gaps due to temporarily high demand or general staffing shortages. It tends to be cyclical and typically accounts for 15% to 30% of the total healthcare workforce. In this article, we’ll provide an overview of the 4 main types of supplemental healthcare staffing: PRN, Seasonal, Travel Contracts, and Local Contracts.
PRN Healthcare Staffing
A large percentage of supplemental staffing is PRN. PRN is an acronym for the Latin phrase “Pro Re Nata”, which means “for the existing occasion” or “as needed.” You’ll also hear people refer to this type of staffing as Per Diem or Registry.
As the name implies, the healthcare provider is looking for people to fill in as the need arises. For example, the healthcare provider might have had an employee call in sick or they may experience an unexpected spike in census on a particular day or week.
As a result, PRN employees most often work on call, meaning the employer calls them in the same day or perhaps the day before the shift. Employers may also schedule the shifts in advance. However, in all cases, the employer may call off the PRN employee. In other words, the shifts are not guaranteed and the cancellation rates can be quite high.
Healthcare professionals can obtain PRN jobs directly with healthcare providers, or indirectly through a healthcare staffing agency. It’s typically more difficult to obtain PRN jobs directly with healthcare providers because they usually hire only a small number of PRN workers directly if they hire any at all.
It tends to be much easier sign on with an agency for PRN work. However, they typically pay less than working directly with the healthcare provider. Additionally, it’s less reliable in terms of actually landing and working shifts.
Many healthcare professionals enjoy the flexibility that PRN work provides. It can also serve well as a side hustle. However, it is highly unstable and most often comes without any benefits at all.
Travel Healthcare Contracts
“Travel healthcare contracts” are a form of supplemental healthcare staffing whereby the employer offers greater stability for the shifts over a set period of time to professionals who live outside the employer’s area. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s break it down.
First, the employer needs to have a consistent longer-term need for staff to offer a travel contract instead of PRN. For example, the employer might have an employee on maternity leave. Or, they might be having trouble hiring permanent employees from their local market just to meet normal demand. This often happens in areas that are experiencing healthcare labor shortages.
Second, the healthcare provider will enforce a rule requiring that candidates have home addresses at least 50 to 100 miles from the healthcare provider’s location. They do this because there are additional costs associated with brining someone in from outside the area such as housing and travel expenses. Essentially, they don’t want to pay locals to cover costs that the locals will not incur.
Third, healthcare providers are typically looking for someone to fill in for many weeks and they are typically willing to guarantee the hours as an incentive. The most common timeframe is 13 weeks, or 3 months. The most common weekly hour guarantees are 36 or 40 hours per week.
Essentially, the travel healthcare professional becomes a part of the hospital’s normal scheduling process. This ensures that the candidate can confidently travel for work knowing that they will in fact work and get paid.
Local Healthcare Contracts
Local contracts are pretty much the same as travel contracts with two main exceptions. First, they are open to candidates local to the healthcare provider. Second, they most often pay less than travel contracts because they don’t need to cover the additional costs that travelers incur.
Seasonal Travel Nursing Contracts
Seasonal Healthcare Contracts are similar to travel contracts as well. As the name implies, these contracts cover certain seasons. For example, hospitals in many parts of Florida or Arizona tend to experience census increases during the winter months as people from colder northern areas flock to better weather.
Due to the consistent nature of seasonal contracts, many healthcare employers choose to staff these positions themselves as opposed to using staffing agencies.
Hybrid Contracts
If you’re involved in supplemental healthcare staffing long enough, then you might come across a “hybrid contract”. Essentially, these contracts attempt to provide the stability of a contract, but are built around PRN staffing. For example, an agency might guarantee a specified number of hours per week so long as the worker is willing to work shifts as they become available at any work site within a specified area.
We’ve written an entire article on hybrid travel nursing contracts. Please review that article for more information.
Locums
Finally, the term “Locum Tenens” or simply “Locums” is another term referring to supplemental healthcare staffing. Locum Tenens is a Latin phrase that means “place holder”.
The industry typically uses this term to refer to supplemental healthcare staffing involving healthcare providers like Physicians, Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants. To clarify, a “Locums” job could take the form of PRN, a travel contract or a local contract so long as the healthcare provider is a Physician, Nurse Practitioner or Physician Assistant.
It’s important to note that these types of healthcare providers more often meet the requirements for treatment as 1099 contractors due to their ability to prescribe and administer medication, work unsupervised and perform in a supervisory capacity. Therefore, staffing agencies more often pay them as 1099 contractors.
