Lucidity Direct

[YSH]

Anyone here know anything about Lucidity (https://luciditydirect.com)?  User Reviews?  Pros/Cons for the medical practice vs. physician? Pay or payment structure for the medical practice vs. physician?

Sounds like a great platform, but would love to know more about it before plunging.

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

It looks very promising. You're not going to find reviews since they just launched within the last week, I believe.

Full disclosure: I may have some sort of professional relationship with the company at some point, but I do not currently. I have had a couple great conversations with the founder, and I've seen a walk-through of the demo.

Essentially, the app / site is looking to be the Uber of locum tenens. By cutting out the middle man, and allowing physicians to interact directly with the facilities and groups in need of locums help, there can be tremendous cost savings. Physicians can set their desired rates, and can see the actual hospital or clinic in need, rather than some vague and possibly deceptive description. There will be user reviews; it will be far more transparent than the current system.

I've had both good and bad experiences as a locum, and I wish a service like Lucidity had been around ten years ago when I was doing it full-time. Some of the headaches could have been avoided.

Best,

-PoF

[Zaphod]

PhysicianOnFIRE wrote:

It looks very promising. You’re not going to find reviews since they just launched within the last week, I believe.

Full disclosure: I may have some sort of professional relationship with the company at some point, but I do not currently. I have had a couple great conversations with the founder, and I’ve seen a walk-through of the demo.

Essentially, the app / site is looking to be the Uber of locum tenens. By cutting out the middle man, and allowing physicians to interact directly with the facilities and groups in need of locums help, there can be tremendous cost savings. Physicians can set their desired rates, and can see the actual hospital or clinic in need, rather than some vague and possibly deceptive description. There will be user reviews; it will be far more transparent than the current system.

I’ve had both good and bad experiences as a locum, and I wish a service like Lucidity had been around ten years ago when I was doing it full-time. Some of the headaches could have been avoided.

Best,

-PoF

Click to expand...

How is it cutting out the middle man? This (and Uber) is simply a different, more transparent (on prices), and probably much faster platform. There is/has to be some sort of transaction fee, etc...or they go out of business. It may be much cheaper, but it still has to be there.

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

Zaphod wrote:

PhysicianOnFIRE wrote:

It looks very promising. You’re not going to find reviews since they just launched within the last week, I believe.

Full disclosure: I may have some sort of professional relationship with the company at some point, but I do not currently. I have had a couple great conversations with the founder, and I’ve seen a walk-through of the demo.

Essentially, the app / site is looking to be the Uber of locum tenens. By cutting out the middle man, and allowing physicians to interact directly with the facilities and groups in need of locums help, there can be tremendous cost savings. Physicians can set their desired rates, and can see the actual hospital or clinic in need, rather than some vague and possibly deceptive description. There will be user reviews; it will be far more transparent than the current system.

I’ve had both good and bad experiences as a locum, and I wish a service like Lucidity had been around ten years ago when I was doing it full-time. Some of the headaches could have been avoided.

Best,

-PoF

Click to expand…

How is it cutting out the middle man? This (and Uber) is simply a different, more transparent (on prices), and probably much faster platform. There is/has to be some sort of transaction fee, etc…or they go out of business. It may be much cheaper, but it still has to be there.

Click to expand...

You are correct. Lucidity, like Uber, will be a different middleman, collecting a small fraction of what the agencies charge, which can be hundreds per shift.

I've tried cutting out the middle man entirely on a couple locums jobs. In both cases, I was not in a very good position to negotiate, and both times I was poorly compensated and lost out on thousands. I like the concept of direct communication on a standard platform, which is what Lucidity provides. Disruptive innovation as they say.

 

 

[jpa]

Who covers malpractice insurance under this model?  Under traditional locums, it is provided by the agency---wouldn't some of the "bigger players" have negotiating power under those circumstances?  Or is that not how MI works? (just a MS-3 here, but I have preceptors who locum on the sides and it fascinates me).  I'm assuming that Lucidity would also provide assistance with paperwork, etc?  Seems like agencies taking care of that is worth at least a little bit

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

jpa wrote:

Who covers malpractice insurance under this model?  Under traditional locums, it is provided by the agency—wouldn’t some of the “bigger players” have negotiating power under those circumstances?  Or is that not how MI works? (just a MS-3 here, but I have preceptors who locum on the sides and it fascinates me).  I’m assuming that Lucidity would also provide assistance with paperwork, etc?  Seems like agencies taking care of that is worth at least a little bit

Click to expand...

I believe it is covered by the hiring entity, or provided by Lucidity for a daily price. I've worked more than a dozen locum contracts, and never had to obtain my own malpractice insurance.

[jfb]

As the medical director of Lucidity, I thought I might be able to provide some additional information and answer any further questions. First, Lucidity is both physician created and physician run. As such, I can assure you that every decision we have made in creating Lucidity has been focused on empowering the physician. Our goal is simply to create a more efficient and more satisfying way for physicians to engage in locum tenens work. Second, our site launched 5 days ago (though it took 2 years to build) and users are just now getting acquainted to the system. As such, I think you are unlikely to find many users posting on their experiences this early in the process.

To answer some specific questions:

Pros for Physician: The physician is able to obtain all information about a potential opportunity prior to revealing contact information. You will not receive recruiter spam through Lucidity and your contact information will never be shared. We believe that by eliminating the middleman, physicians will be able to negotiate more favorable rates directly with the hospital through our online negotiation tool. Credentialing documents can be stored on the site for ease of transfer to the practice once an agreement is reached. There are many more benefits that can be found on our site that I will skip at this time for brevity.

Pros for Practice: No middleman agency brokering the physician rate. The practice knows exactly how much money the physician is getting paid. Lucidity charges the practice a flat rate % of the booking fee that is a small fraction of the typical agency fee (We believe this will allow physicians to be paid more, and practices to pay less, simultaneously). Practices know that all the physician's credentials on the platform have been verified and are accurate.

Other information: The physician is paid weekly by Lucidity. Lucidity is paid monthly by the medical practices. Malpractice is either provided by the practice, or by Lucidity. The physician, however, is not permitted (or required) to provide coverage. Lucidity has partnered with a travel agency to help with travel arrangements if the physician would like assistance.

That covers most of what has been asked here. If anyone has questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Also, you can contact us through our website which provides an excellent overview of the platform. Additionally, any physician can easily sign up by simply entering your email address and couple of other fields. This will allow you to explore the platform and access our very thorough FAQ section which can likely answer any other question you may have. After exploring the site, you can choose to continue by completing onboarding which only takes about 15 minutes.

Finally, our platform is currently optimized for iPad and desktop and we will have an app out for iPhone soon (with Android to follow). We are working very hard to increase our inventory of opportunities and we are making great progress. While initially you may not see jobs in your specific area, check back frequently as we will be adding a significant number of jobs over the next 1-2 months as we bring new clients onto the platform.

Best,

Jay

[doc01]

why no ortho?

[jfb]

Lucidity is designed to support all fields of medicine. As we grow, we will add additional specialties not currently listed (ENT, NSGY, ortho, urology, etc).

[braden]

As a resident in my final year and considering locum tenens work I find this really intriguing. It brings up two questions/concerns for me though:

1) I worry that this platform will not provide the paperwork support I've heard is the most helpful part of an agency, and therefore am hesitant to use this platform for my very first contracts.

2) My partner is also a physician and we would ideally like to find contracts in similar regions at similar times. This may difficult with locum tenens in general, but I wonder if this site could somehow make that search easier. It seems like once they build out their partner practices, it could make searching for more unique situations like mine easier.

Excited to see how this platform does!

[homanga]

You mention a travel agency to help with arrangements but who is covering travel costs? This has traditionally been paid for by the booking agency, is this on the provider, lucidity or the practice in this model?

[jfb]

Thanks again for your interest. Ill try to answer a these questions:

 

1) Paperwork: Traditional locums agencies do help fill out some paperwork for you. However, there is usually some portion of the paperwork that they cannot or do not fill out. In my experience, they usually fill out basic demographic information and sometimes your educational history. Obviously the physician will have to fill out the sections that ask things like every address that you have lived at for the past 10 years, license holds, malpractice, privilege requests, sedation forms, etc.  Also, you will find that the amount of support for this varies based on the agency. At Lucidity, we try to ease the credentialing process by allowing you to store all of your credentialing documents on the platform. While our document management system is early in its functionality, eventually it will offer expiration notifications and other useful functions. Once you agree on a job, that site will immediately be able to download all of your documents and you will immediately have access to the hospital's credentialing forms. Additionally, the credentialing office at each hospital can provide the support of helping fill in some of the paperwork as they would for typical full-time staff physician application. In my personal experience, and from talking to others, the biggest hassle with credentialing is tracking down all the documents required. Filling out the paperwork is actually pretty easy and has never taken me that much time (certainly not enough to pay someone to do it for me). The locums agency presents this as a big service. Ultimately, each person just needs to decide if filling out the application is worth the margin that the agency takes off the top. As with travel, some people may still want a full service agency understanding they will pay more, while others recognize that with a little bit more work, they can use expedia, etc to book their trips with significant savings.

2) Partner Searching: This is a great question and one we have considered as my partner is a physician too. At this point, we have plans to allow for multiple physicians within the same field of practice to create "teams" where they can negotiate a common rate for covering a set number of shifts for a site. This happens not uncommonly in the locums space and can be favorable for physicians. We do not have current plans to link search features between users in different fields of practice. When we considered this, we thought people would prefer to perform the searches individually and look at opportunities in each region that are available for both specialties. We believe that Lucidity will allow you to do this more easily and transparently than through a traditional agency.

3) Travel: Travel is not traditionally paid by the locums agency. It is usually a pass through expense directly to the practice site. Again, a "service" that the agency inflates in importance. The agency will take your travel expenses and bill that expense directly to hospital, separate from whatever hourly rate the agency is getting paid to place you at that site. With Lucidity, travel (along with everything else) is negotiable. You can definitely negotiate to have travel covered, in which case the site pays. This negotiation occurs directly with the practice site and Lucidity has no involvement in negotiations. If you want assistance with actual travel arrangements, as mentioned, Lucidity has partnered with a travel agency who can help book flights, hotels, rental cars, etc. The fee for using the travel agency will be paid by Lucidity. Some physicians feel that they can negotiate higher rates if they don't request travel. This is an option for you as well.

Thank you again for the questions. Please don't hesitate to ask any others. Also, if you would like to discuss in more detail you are welcome to direct message me and I can share my contact information.

 

 

[Winkleweizen]

Any new EM positions going to open up soon? None of the current ones are very enticing

[childay]

I don't do locums but signed up, seems like a pretty slick website so far, lack of job postings aside.  Interesting idea

[jfb]

We fully recognize that the utility of Lucidity is dependent on having a large, diverse portfolio of job opportunities.  Yes, you can expect more jobs to be listed soon. We have multiple agreements in place that have occurred over the last 3 weeks or so. We are working now to train these sites and make sure that we provide them with the resources they need to use the site appropriately. I would suggest checking back every couple of weeks as I think it will be slow over the next 1-2 months, but will increase significantly in early 2017. In the meantime, thank you for your patience and understanding. I can tell you we are working very hard to make Lucidity a truly great experience.