We’ll be the first to agree there can be a negative stigma associated with managed service providers, especially in the locum tenens industry. For many healthcare facilities, the phrase is practically synonymous with hidden fees and a generalized approach that prioritizes process over people. And frankly, that skepticism is understandable. Too many facilities have been burned by MSPs that promised efficiency but delivered more headaches.

But runaway locums spend, the administrative drain of managing multiple agencies, inconsistent fill rates, and lack of visibility into who’s actually coming through your doors are real problems, too. And they don’t disappear just because you’ve had a bad experience with a vendor in the past. The goal shouldn’t be to avoid the MSP model entirely; it should be to find one that solves those problems instead of adding to them. Let’s explore how to find that kind of provider.

Debunking Common Staffing MSP Myths

Misconceptions about MSPs often prevent practices and hospitals from accessing a solution that can streamline their workforce, reduce costs, and improve continuity of care. Let’s clear up a few of the most common ones.

Myth #1: “An MSP is just a middleman that adds cost.”

On the surface, it can look that way. But the right staffing MSP doesn’t add cost, but rather controls it.

Without an MSP, different departments or managers may be engaging multiple agencies independently, often paying widely varying bill rates for the same specialty. There’s no visibility into total spend. An MSP centralizes this process, establishing rate guardrails, eliminating duplicative fees, and providing full spend transparency. 

The result is almost always a reduction in overall locums spend, coupled with a dramatic decrease in the administrative hours your internal team spends on vendor management, invoice reconciliation, and emergency staffing fires.

Myth #2: “An MSP will limit my access to the best locums providers.”

Many healthcare leaders fear that an MSP will force them to use a narrow, “preferred” list of vendors, shrinking their talent pool. In reality, a well-managed MSP expands it.

An MSP manages a curated network of multiple staffing agencies, not just one. Instead of your internal team having to vet, credential, and manage relationships with dozens of agencies, the MSP does that heavy lifting for you. They bring all those vendors together into a single, competitive ecosystem, ensuring you get the best available talent from across the market.

Myth #3: “We’ll lose control over who walks through our doors.”

This myth stems from a fear of becoming a faceless entity in a corporate process. In truth, an MSP is designed to give you more control, not less.

You remain the final decision-maker on every clinician brought into your facility. The MSP handles the administrative complexity, but they present you with qualified, vetted candidates for your approval. You never lose the ability to say, “Yes, send me that provider,” or, “No, let’s keep looking.” The goal is to take the administrative burden off your plate while putting the clinical decision-making firmly in your hands.

With those myths dispelled, let’s dive in to how you can steer the conversation when you sit down with a potential provider. 

7 questions to help you identify a great healthcare MSP

Whether you are counting down the days until your current MSP contract ends, or you’re starting to explore options, there are important questions to ask in order to determine if an MSP is going to help you meet your recruitment objectives.

1. Can you share some examples of how your MSP help healthcare facilities gain efficiencies?

A healthcare MSP should be able to showcase how it optimizes efficiencies so in-house and agency recruiters can focus on strategic priorities. Many think that adding this extra layer between the provider and recruiter slows things down, but if done correctly, it’s quite the opposite. MSPs should eliminate the non-value-added tasks bogging down the process and provide a single source of truth to ensure that shifts are optimally filled.

2. What automations can your MSP provide?

Look for MSPs that offer digital integration, electronic time capture, and standardized agreements within a centralized portal to streamline and simplify operations. 

3. What cost saving benefits does your MSP offer?

Many MSPs will say they can save you money, but aren’t transparent about how they do it — some even adjust down the bill rate to agencies, taking a margin off the top of the rate they quote the hospital. This ultimately impacts the pay to the provider. Look for MSPs that offer flat percentage fees without hidden costs.

The right partner will be transparent about how the process works by sharing concrete case studies.

4. What happens to my existing staffing agency relationships?

Hiring an MSP provider shouldn’t mean relinquishing control of relationships that have required trust and time to build. Keep an eye out for providers that maintain vendor neutrality, or those with onboarding fees that make it difficult for smaller agency partners to participate.

5. What credentialing protocols does your platform support?

Given the complexity of credentialing in healthcare, an MSP should help expedite and streamline the process without disrupting your credentialing department. Specifically in locum tenens, MSPs should have specific workflows designed for physician credentialing.

6. How many healthcare facilities do you support in this geographic region?

This one is important! Many MSPs want to show off the number of healthcare organizations they’ve worked with in a particular region. It might look impressive on the surface, but how can they prioritize your open shifts? An MSP exclusively serving a single healthcare facility within a geographical market offers significant advantages, ensuring unwavering loyalty and a dedicated focus on sourcing the most skilled healthcare professionals in the area.

7. Do you support internal staffing?

When jobs are released, some MSPs that are owned and managed by large staffing companies will hold jobs for a specific period of time to see if they can fill it internally before releasing it to agency partners. If they don’t fill it internally, how does that benefit you? Run, don’t walk, if you experience that! You need unbiased, competitive access to the best healthcare staff as quickly as possible.

A unique healthcare MSP from Syncx

The best way to recruit doctors? Provide a best-in-class experience, so they tell their colleagues about it. It starts there, and it ends with our custom locums management solutions specifically designed for the healthcare industry. At Syncx:

• We democratize competitive access to desirable open locum tenens positions in real-time, for a holistic view across the staffing spectrum. Through this democratization, healthcare facilities gain efficiencies, automation, and cost savings.
• Our technology enables recruiters by providing visibility into the credentialing process, facilitating quicker placement of candidates and allowing for the identification of any gaps or deficiencies within the process.
• Healthcare agencies pay a flat percentage fee of 5%. There are no implementation fees, monthly add-ons, reduced rates, or other hidden costs. We are 100% transparent with our pricing model.
• Our priority is to cultivate exclusive relationships within a region, enabling us to concentrate on deliverability. Unlike larger firms, we don’t require our clients to compete for talent amongst each other. We believe in quality over quantity; more isn’t always better.
• Our agency partners enjoy working with us! It’s a win-win all around. 

The real X factor in locums staffing

Our MSP is specifically designed for locum tenens. Say goodbye to administrative headaches and kick burdensome, manual tasks to the curb. Book a demo to see our technology in action.