Booking a locum tenens assignment is only the first step. What follows can determine how confident and prepared a clinician feels on day one. We redesigned the post booking experience to replace fragmentation with guidance, clarity, and consistent support.
Clinician Challenges
For clinicians working locum tenens, the period between accepting an assignment and arriving onsite can be the most uncertain part of the journey.
After saying yes, clinicians often face:
- Multiple applications with overlapping requirements.
- Outreach from several departments at once.
- Variable and often unpredictable facility timelines.
The result is often frustration, administrative overload, and a lack of confidence about what needs to happen next or who to contact with questions.
At Jackson and Coker, we recognized early that while regulatory and facility requirements cannot be eliminated, the experience of navigating them can be significantly improved.
Our Approach
We redesigned the post-booking experience to reduce complexity for clinicians by centralizing communication, minimizing duplicate paperwork, and coordinating internal teams behind the scenes.
Once an assignment is booked, clinicians are supported by a provider onboarding coordinator (POC), a single point of contact who guides them through the entire pre-start process. While clinicians continue working with their recruiter, the POC becomes the primary resource for anything related to credentialing, licensing, and travel preparation.
This model replaces fragmented communication with clarity and gives clinicians confidence that their assignment is progressing as expected. Instead of tracking multiple emails from different departments, clinicians know exactly who to contact and what comes next, usually within their first week after booking.
Implementation Highlights
A Single Point of Contact: The provider onboarding coordinator consolidates communication that would otherwise come from multiple departments. Clinicians know exactly who to contact, what to prioritize, and what is coming next.
Smarter Application Management: Clinicians complete a secure internal application via Axuall early in the process. Information from this application is reused to pre-populate facility paperwork whenever possible, reducing repetitive data entry and saving time.
Direct Coordination with Medical Staff Offices: Our privileging team works directly with each facility’s medical staff office to confirm requirements, track approval timelines, and follow up on missing items. Clinicians are kept informed without being pulled into unnecessary back-and-forth.
Early Enrollment Support: Payer enrollment and billing-related requirements are addressed as early as possible in the process, helping facilities avoid reimbursement delays and reducing the need for clinicians to complete paperwork after an assignment ends.
Coordinated Travel and Arrival Planning: Travel preferences are collected approximately three weeks prior to the start date, with bookings finalized once dates are confirmed. This ensures smoother arrivals and fewer last-minute changes.
Structured Internal Collaboration: Weekly cross-functional meetings between teams allow us to proactively escalate risks, maintain shared visibility into each assignment, and resolve stalled files more quickly.
Results + Impact
What was once a fragmented experience becomes a guided, transparent process where clinicians know who is managing what, and when action is required from them.
Clinicians experience:
- Less administrative burden.
- Fewer duplicate requests for information.
- Clear guidance throughout the process.
- A more predictable and supported path to day one.
Because teams are aligned by specialty, clinicians benefit from coordinators who understand their scope of practice, common privileging requirements, and facility expectations before issues arise. This familiarity reduces back-and-forth, helps anticipate obstacles, and creates a smoother path to day one.
Facilities benefit from earlier enrollment completion, better-prepared clinicians, and fewer last-minute delays.
A Better Way to Get to Day One
Locum tenens work will always involve regulatory and operational complexity. Our approach does not eliminate those requirements, but it does remove unnecessary friction.
By investing in centralized communication, specialty-aligned teams, and systems that reduce duplication, we help clinicians move from booking to first shift with confidence, clarity, and support.
About Jackson and Coker
Jackson and Coker Locum Tenens connects healthcare organizations of all sizes with physicians and advanced practitioners because we believe everyone deserves compassion and care. With 40+ years of fostering purposeful relationships, we transform lives through locum tenens staffing by combining unparalleled service and tailored solutions. Jackson and Coker Locum Tenens is part of the Jackson Healthcare® family of companies.
Explore staffing solutions with Jackson and Coker.
We help healthcare organizations streamline onboarding, reduce friction, and keep clinicians prepared and on schedule.
