Top 4 Healthcare Vendor Management Software in 2024 built for Locum Physicians

This blog explores four top-tier vendor management solutions tailored for the healthcare industry. These tools offer features that address unique sector challenges, from compliance tracking to performance metrics, helping organizations build stronger, more transparent relationships with their suppliers.

Before we dive into the details, here's a quick overview of each tool we'll cover in this post.

LocumSmart

LocumSmart is a specialized Vendor Management System (VMS) designed exclusively for managing locum tenens, or temporary healthcare staffing. It aims to streamline the complex processes involved in locum recruitment, making it easier for healthcare organizations to manage their temporary staffing needs.

LocumSmart is ideal for hospitals and healthcare systems that deal with frequent locum tenens staffing needs or agencies that provide temporary healthcare professionals.

Key Features

LocumSmart offers several features that help in healthcare vendor management:

• Centralized Platform: All contracts, communications, billings, and other processes are managed in one place, reducing the complexity of handling multiple vendors and providers.
• Bidding process: Allows for locumsmart smart scoring of submissions to jobs based on a variety of criteria (Specialty Match, Provider Score, License Match, Certification Match)
• Data-Driven Decisions: Provides complete visibility into locum spend and staffing, enabling better decision-making based on comprehensive data analytics.
• Access to Providers: Connects users to tens of thousands of vetted healthcare providers from over 80 top locum agencies, including exclusive access to certain agencies.
• Vendor Neutrality: Ensures all agencies get equal access to job postings, promoting fair competition and timely staffing

Pros

• Speed of candidates
• Name-clearing features for agencies
• Vendor management capabilities - housing contracts, tiring vendors, pausing vendors, cloning jobs.
• Data-Driven Decisions: The platform offers tools to analyze staffing and cost data, helping organizations make informed decisions.
• Centralized Management: By consolidating all aspects of locum management into one system, it simplifies the process and reduces administrative burden.
• Streamlined Processes: Helps locum agencies and healthcare organizations streamline staffing and analytics processes, saving time and increasing efficiency.
• Scalability: Suitable for small niche providers as well as large national networks, offering flexibility to adapt to different organizational needs.

Cons

• Lack of customization in process and overall technology - every organization is a little different, Locumsmart lacks the ability to adjust workflows and process preferences in order to tailor to organizations needs.
• Too many candidates and inability to pause submissions - a lot of healthcare organizations are strategic about not nameclearing too many clinicians in a market they are recruiting for to avoid unnecessary buyout obligations. Without the ability to pause jobs you can get too many clinicians locked under expensive buy-out fees.
• Scheduling Capabilities: In recent years, Locumsmart has added on shift management capabilities which include the ability to house scheduled shifts in a database but they do not have robust scheduling capabilities including a scheduler interface, open shift management/booking, splitting shifts, publishing schedules/sharable links and more. For physician management, scheduling is such a constant and time consuming aspect of workforce management this can be a major time add to manually log every individual shift into the system to get full use of their offering.
• Reporting and connecting data
• Lacking task management and assignment management
• Limited rate configurations
• Mobile Experience
• Groups needing strategic staffing solutions like float pools, their internal staffing solutions were a bolt on to their VMS and were not built for total workforce management
• Complex Integration: While the API offers significant benefits, the integration process requires technical expertise and can be complex, potentially posing a challenge for organizations without dedicated IT resources

AHSA

AHSA is a managed service provider (MSP) with a vendor management system (VMS) specifically built. It offers a comprehensive, enterprise-wide solution tailored specifically for healthcare institutions. Their dedicated approach aims to simplify the often intricate process of supplemental staffing, helping healthcare organizations focus on what matters most: patient care.

AHSA  is ideal for healthcare facilities with diverse staffing needs, offering centralized management, real-time data, and a vendor-neutral approach.

Key features

• Centralized Staffing Management: Trio VMS provides a single platform to manage all aspects of supplemental staffing, from recruitment to credentialing and compliance. This centralization helps to reduce administrative burdens and ensures that all staffing activities are coordinated efficiently.
• Real-Time Data and Transparent Reporting: The system offers real-time data visibility and transparent reporting, allowing healthcare organizations to make informed decisions based on up-to-date information. This feature includes detailed insights into staffing levels, financial reports, and credentialing status.
• Consolidated Billing and Audit Procedures: AHSA provides consolidated billing for all supplemental staff, allowing easy invoice review and approval. The audit procedures ensure invoice accuracy, saving clients time and money.
• Custom Solutions: AHSA offers tailor-fit staffing solutions to meet the specific needs of each healthcare organization. These custom solutions help to engage the workforce and retain critical staff, enhancing overall operational efficiency.

Pros

• Vendor-Neutral Approach: AHSA's network includes over 200 staffing agencies, all operating under a single, standard contract. This vendor-neutral approach ensures a competitive and fair process for filling staffing needs, which helps to maintain high-quality standards and cost-efficiency.
• Improved Coverage: The system ensures that healthcare facilities maintain a high shift fulfillment rate and on-time start rate, reducing gaps in coverage.
• High-Quality Support: AHSA combines advanced technology with dedicated client services, providing a high-touch approach to workforce management.

Cons

• Originally built for nursing assignments not locums. Physicians are complex when it comes to credentialing and scheduling and systems not built with these nuances in mind can have limitations
• Limited Roster TrackingTrio: VMS does not offer robust roster tracking capabilities, which can be a drawback for organizations needing detailed scheduling management.
• Analytics Limitations: The analytics provided by Trio VMS do not enable critical measurement of scheduling performance, potentially limiting the ability to optimize staffing schedules effectively.
• Complex Implementation: Customizing and integrating the platform with existing systems can be complex and may require significant technical expertise, posing a challenge for organizations without dedicated IT resources.

VNDLY (Workday)

VNDLY is designed for organizations managing a diverse contingent workforce, integrating with Workday HCM for comprehensive workforce visibility and compliance.

Key features

• Statement of work (SOW) management: Manages SOW projects in a single system, with tools for mapping and adhering to requirements across resourcing, budgets, timelines, and more.
• Worker profile management: Quickly captures baseline information needed to understand and make decisions related to the extended workforce program.
• Compliance and risk management: Supports compliance with configurable settings in line with local requirements and controls data access with role-based options.
• Global workforce support: Provides one global instance to centralize programs, supporting local compliance, in-country invoicing, and tax management.
• Invoicing capabilities: Offers advanced features including line-item-level and individual off-cycle invoicing, digital invoicing across locations, and a custom invoice template builder.

Pros

• Integration capabilities especially with Workday: Seamlessly integrates with Workday HCM for a total workforce solution.
• Comprehensive solution: Offers end-to-end management of the contingent workforce lifecycle.
• Automation: Automates various processes from sourcing to offboarding, thus increasing efficiency.

Cons

• No Scheduler
• Not built for on-going assignments built for SOW
• Not built for healthcare
• Limited rate structures
• Potential complexity: The wide range of features and capabilities might lead to a steep learning curve for new users.
• Dependency on Workday ecosystem: While it integrates well with Workday HCM, this could be a limitation for organizations not using other Workday products.

Kimedics

Kimedics is an all-in-one healthcare workforce management solution that combines staff CRM, ATS, roster management, credentialing, scheduling, pay/bill automation, analytics, and client/vendor management in addition to direct relationships with clinical workforce (flaot pools, full time, 1099).

Kimedics targets healthcare organizations needing efficient scheduling and workforce management, offering centralized tools for scheduling, tracking, and analytics.

Key features

• Centralized Roster Management: Kimedics provides a unified command over the entire workforce, centralizing roster management for all locations, clients, and vendors an organization manages. This feature allows users to efficiently manage the credentials, licenses, and statuses of healthcare providers in one place.
• Vendor Collaboration Tools: The platform offers tools to strengthen communication between clinical teams, non-clinical teams, and vendors. This includes admin and mobile provider apps that facilitate seamless collaboration across all stakeholders involved in filling schedules and managing payments.
• Workforce Planning and Performance Insights: Kimedics enables organizations to forecast costs generated by their internal and external provider mix. It provides insights on productivity and agency performance, helping healthcare organizations hit their budget targets and gain valuable analytics on their workforce management.

Pros

• Built from Healthcare Operations perspective
• Real-Time Data and Analytics powered by PowerBi: The software provides real-time insights into staffing operations, including schedules, credentials, and spending. This capability allows organizations to make data-driven decisions, optimize workforce management, and improve overall operational efficiency
• Integrations
• Task management, Alerts and notifications allow for collaboration management
• Highly configurable and flexible on feature functionality/plans
• Vendor-Neutral Platform: Kimedics is designed to facilitate collaboration between healthcare organizations and their vendors. The platform allows for streamlined communication and shared access to important information, which enhances the efficiency of managing both internal and external providers.
• Mobile Experience
• Advanced rate configurations

Cons

• While getting data into Kimedics is easy and fast, due to the highly collaborative nature of Kimedics and the number of departments/stakeholders that will log in,  for larger organizations, roll out and training will need to be planned and strategically rolled out. Most organizations on-board a large number of highly engaged users to give shared visibility to their teams in both web and mobile experience.
• Organizations implementing Kimedics often spend time up front revamping and analyzing their current workflows before automating those workflows in the system. This can take up time up front planning but has a transformative impact when workflows are mapped and governed with Kimedics Workflow automation and task management technology
• No unified vendor contracting. Because Kimedics is a software that allows organizations to collaborate with their partners very flexibly, it works best for Healthcare organizations that already have existing contracts and vendor relationships. Other VMS solutions offer contract management with agencies to ensure sign up to the platform grants direct access to a network of agencies. If you are interested in tailored vendor contracting services, check out Venn Workforce Optimization to learn more about implementing the Kimedics offering with MSP services added on.

Which Healthcare Vendor Management Tool Should You Try?

If you're looking to reduce administrative burdens and focus more on patient care rather than on managing fragmented systems, check out Kimedics. Kimedics offers an all-in-one solution that integrates various aspects of workforce management, including scheduling, credentialing, and payroll automation.

Schedule a demo with their team to get some tips to manage your vendors better and know how Kimedics can help you.