Holiday staffing is a different problem from a volume surge. The dates are fixed and you know them a year ahead. The hard part is that your permanent team, your office staff and the locum clinicians you'd call all want the same days off.
Two other posts cover the seasonal surges: flu season surge staffing and summer staffing in tourist markets. This one covers urgent care holiday staffing for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's.
Set Your Holiday Hours Before You Build the Schedule
Decide which holidays you're open and for how long. Reduced hours can turn two shifts into one, which changes how many people you need.
Use your own history to decide. Look at visits by hour for each holiday in past years, and for the days just before and after. Primary care offices near you close on the holidays, and your visit history shows how much of that demand comes to you.
Publish the hours to your staff and your patients once they're set. Every later step depends on them.
Write Down the Holiday Staffing Rotation
A rotation that lives in a manager's memory produces the same argument every year. Write the rule down and give it to the whole team.
A workable rule answers four questions:
- Which holidays count, including the day before and the day after if you treat them the same way
- How holidays alternate, so the clinician who worked Christmas last year doesn't work it this year
- The deadline for requests and trades
- Who approves a trade
Apply the rule to every role. An MA or a front desk lead who works every holiday because nobody wrote a rotation for them has the same reason to leave as a physician would.
Check your employment agreements before you change anyone's holiday obligations. Some agreements set the number of holidays a clinician works. Holiday pay rules for employees also vary by state and by agreement, so ask your payroll provider or employment counsel how they apply to you.
List the Holiday Shifts the Rotation Leaves Open
Once the rotation is applied, some shifts will still be open. List them by date, hours and role.
Include support roles. A provider working Thanksgiving without an RN or MA to room patients sees fewer patients than the schedule assumed.
Post Holiday Shifts Early, With the Rate
A locum clinician plans their own holidays too. A shift posted in early fall can be planned around. A shift posted in December goes to whoever happens to be free.
Decide the holiday rate before you post. A clinician working Christmas is giving up their own holiday and will weigh the shift that way. State the rate in the listing so you aren't negotiating it one shift at a time.
Three other choices make a holiday shift easier to fill:
- Offer shorter shifts. A clinician can work a morning and still have the rest of the day.
- Ask returning clinicians first. Someone who has worked at your clinic needs no first-shift orientation on a day when few staff are there to give it.
- Name the exact date. Ask who'd take Thanksgiving and who'd take New Year's Day. Some clinicians want one and not the other.
Finish Credentialing and EMR Access Before Your Office Staff Leave
A clinician who's new to your clinic has to pass your credentialing review and have a working EMR login before the shift. The people who do that work also take time off in late December.
Set a cutoff date. Every holiday clinician is cleared and can log in before your credentialing and IT contacts leave. If you don't know how long your own review takes from first document to cleared, time it this year and set next year's cutoff from that number. The EMR access checklist for locum clinicians covers the login side.
Name a Backup and an Approver for Each Holiday Shift
On a holiday, the manager who normally handles a call-out is off as well. Before the holiday, write down for each shift:
- A second clinician who's cleared at your clinic and has agreed to be called
- Who takes the call if someone cancels that morning
- Who can approve a replacement, and up to what rate
- Who a locked-out clinician calls for EMR or building access
The same-day call-out playbook covers the replacement steps.
Record What Happened for Next Year's Holiday Staffing
In January, write down who worked each holiday, which locum clinicians your staff would ask back, and how visits compared with the staffing on each day. Those notes become next year's rotation, next year's holiday hours and the first list of clinicians to contact.
Rediworks is a self-service marketplace for urgent care locum shifts. You post your holiday shifts yourself, with the clinician type, dates, hours and rate. Sign up to post shifts.