More than a third of practices need GP locums ‘once a week or more’, a new NASGP survey has found.
A third of respondents also said the biggest staffing challenge they face as a practice is low staffing budgets.
Some 19% need locums because they don’t have enough staff, and the majority (40%) use a booking platform like LocumDeck to book GPs. Seven percent of respondents still use agencies to book locums, raising concerns about the cost of overheads for finding cover.
A fifth of practices said their biggest challenge was managing holidays, and half of all respondents said the number one reason they use GP locums at their practice is for holidays.
The survey of 288 practice managers follows a previous survey of GPs by NASGP. Seven in 10 GP locums reported difficulty finding work, NASGP found.
Respondents also provided positive feedback about the platform. One commented, “LocumDeck has helped us particularly with sourcing GPs for our Remote Access Service”. Another wrote “We love it – have used for years and it is great. We’ve managed to get a few locums to move over which really helps us too!”.
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, NASGP chair, said: “The continued use of locums by many practices using LocumDeck correlates with what we’ve also seen from the platform’s booking data in high-adoption areas, where bookings have held their own for over two years, and a third needing locums every week.
“With so many more locums than ever before, GP locums are experiencing very stiff competition for work, and hopefully another insight from this survey – that such a high proportion of practices need us most at holiday times – may help somewhat with future planning.
“And despite practices crying out for better staffing budgets, we’re surprised that some practices are paying agencies when they could be bypassing these and booking locums direct. Our platform, LocumDeck, is free for practices to use, and they pay the locum’s fee – nothing more – making it much more competitive than using an agency.”