Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent Clinical Commissioning Groups have signed up to use NHS Midlands and Lancashire’s (NHS ML) digital Find me a Locum solution for their GP practices.

They have commissioned it via NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Framework for Digital Solutions for Sessional Clinical Capacity in Primary Care. Being on the framework enables us to easily offer Find me a Locum to clinical commissioning groups across England and help relieve capacity pressures for practices.

We developed Find me a Locum with partner GP Federations – people at the sharp end of general practice. This keeps costs low, delivering great value. Tried and tested, it has already been helping practices to find locums quickly, securely and at low cost, making significant savings on agency fees.

Find me a Locum provides fast, efficient, high quality ‘pairing’ between practice vacancies and locums. It is accessible 24/7 by a website and easily downloadable app.

It facilitates payments by providing tools to practices and locums to manage the invoicing process, end-to-end. Practices retain full control and benefit from support of a dedicated account manager and service desk.

Other benefits for practices include:

• quick and easy digital advertising of slots to a wide audience
• assurance that locums are accredited and registered (with evidence for CQC)
• automatic validation of locums against national performers list and GMC register
• training and awareness-raising to encourage clinical and managerial uptake and ongoing use
• regular system updates and enhancements.

Deputy Director of NHS ML’s Digital Innovation Unit, Priyantha Jayawardane, said: “We are delighted that we will be able to see Find me a Locum helping to relieve capacity pressures for GP practices across Staffordshire.”

For more information, contact mlcsu.commercial@nhs.net or go to www.findmealocum.co.uk